World Chess Champion

[Serb]

If Rose/Orange/whatever revolution is good enough for you as a democratic mechanism, then hell yeah, Kasparov is ****ing democrat.

But in reality he is a marginal lunatic politic living in his own fantasy world in a galaxy far, far away (Or at best, as Charlie said: a great chess player, but naive politician. It's a nice summary of the show, imho).

[Barnabas]

Kasparov is crazy

[Serb]

Amen

[lord of the mark]

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9682621

[LordShiva]

I've met Vishy. He's a nice guy.

[East Street Trader]

Boris Gelfand (rather surprisingly) Anand's closest rival in the tournament won yesterday and Anand drew. So now there is a one point gap with two games to go.

Gelfand's last two opponents are slightly tougher than Anand's.

Kramnik, the incumbent, also won yesterday and now lies third, a point and a half behind Anand.

So it is not quite decided yet.

[TheStinger]

I love the way the instinct of Russians is to label political opponents as mad.

Send them to the asylum

[DrSpike]

Anand will win - but this is just the first stage. Not everyone within the chess community will recognise him as world champion unless he beats Kramnik in a match. Winning in Mexico guarantees him that match, but Kramnik is stronger over a series of games so it will be interesting to see who prevails.

[East Street Trader]

Kramnik does seem to have the psychological strength required for match play. I was very admiring of the way he stood up to all the pressures of his match with Topalov.

But Anand has good all round strength and won't be particularly easy to prepare for.

A match to look forward to, I agree.

I also hope we soon get back to having a fully settled procedure for determining a challenger.

[DrSpike]

Me too, but I wouldn't get your hopes up - time and time again FIDE have shown that they are a corrupt, badly-run organisation.

[East Street Trader]

I thought Bessel Kok would win at the last election and things might then have changed.

Anyway we have a unified title which is a big step forward and it seems to now be universally agreed that in the future the title must be determined by a match and not by a tournament. It seems likely that the right to challenge will be won through a tournament so what is needed is a method to determine who gets to play in that challengers tournament.

I would favour something simple - the top eight players by rating on 1st Jan, bi-anually, for example.

FIDE seems to like more complex rules.

Another plus is that both Kramnik and Anand seem to appreciate that their personal interests are inextricably linked to the general good of the game. Neither will, I think, be as egotistical about organisational matters as people like Kasparov or Fisher have been in the past or as, currently, I would expect Topalov to be.

[MikeH]

Bessel Kok?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
I thought Bessel Kok would win at the last election and things might then have changed.

Anyway we have a unified title which is a big step forward and it seems to now be universally agreed that in the future the title must be determined by a match and not by a tournament. It seems likely that the right to challenge will be won through a tournament so what is needed is a method to determine who gets to play in that challengers tournament.

I would favour something simple - the top eight players by rating on 1st Jan, bi-anually, for example.

FIDE seems to like more complex rules.

Another plus is that both Kramnik and Anand seem to appreciate that their personal interests are inextricably linked to the general good of the game. Neither will, I think, be as egotistical about organisational matters as people like Kasparov or Fisher have been in the past or as, currently, I would expect Topalov to be.

I tend to agree - Anand and Kramnik seem pretty well balanced people and a match between them to determine world champion would probably be a good one (without any toiletgate scandals!).

And yes, Bessel Kok does have a pretty amusing name.

[The Vagabond]

Yeah, a match between Anand and Kramnik would be great. The winner would be a legitimate champion in the eyes of the public, no more questions asked. A tournament winner doesn't have this degree of legitimacy. I wonder how could it happen that Kramnik agreed to put his title at stake in a simple tournament rather than a match...

[DrSpike]

Because there is a clause guaranteeing him a title match with the winner soon after (if he doesn't win himself). So basically he does have to lose a match to lose his title.