The challenge, which is given verbatim below, comes a day after the news broke that Vladimir Kramnik, the unified world champion, has agreed to play in the Mexican World Championship next September. In fact it may be a reaction to the news. Here first is the challenge:

* Note that in the letter we received the word "thousand" was missing in the line that originally read "Price fund US Dollars one million and five hundred (net)". In the following text it is implied, and so we added it to the letter, while also correcting some obvious orthographical errors.

The FIDE rules cited by Silvio Danailov would seem to support the challenge. This is what the relevant passages say:

You can study the full rules on the FIDE site. We note that there are slightly less than nine months left before the start of the 2007 World Championship in Mexico City, which starts on September 12th 2007. This means that the Kramnik-Topalov return match, if it is considered, would have to end no later than March 12th. However, the tournament schedule of both players is as follows:

• Kramnik and Topalov play in Wijk aan Zee from January 12 to 28.
• Topalov plays in Morelia/Linares from February 16 to March 2nd.

It is unclear how a Kramnik-Topalov match can be staged six months before Mexico without at least Topalov cancelling his participation in Morelia/Linares.