Sofia: Top seed Viswanathan Anand will start his campaign against Bulgarian world No.3 Veselin Topalov in the first round of the MTel Masters chess meet here.

The category-20 double round-robin tournament will see Vladimir Kramnik competing with former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine, while Michael Adams of England will take on Judit Polgar of Hungary.

The tournament is the biggest event in Bulgaria since Anand last year played a short match with Topalov here.

The unique feature of the meet is its well-designed rules that prohibit any mutually-agreed draws between participants at an early stage of the game.

For the first time in competitive chess history, draws can be arrived at only through perpetual checks, repetition of position and in case of theoretically drawn positions.

The title won’t be shared in case of level scores and tiebreak and a fresh match of shorter duration between those involved will be played to determine the winner.