In the earlier diagrams White's Nf3 should be removed.

i caught the qxg5 of naka in the act!

<Problem is, Kasparov chose Short (who we can say earned a World Championship match by winning the Candidates cycle), ran a PCA cycle with Anand that had much fairness to it>

So really, Kasparov did not chose Short, or Anand. They both qualified. Short did so entirely from within the traditional FIDE system.

<Blunderdome>, the PCA/FIDE cycle split was not really analogous to conference championships, because the strongest challengers (at least, judging from the results) played in both cycles. Kramnik, Kamsky, Anand, Adams, and Gelfand all participated. Anand and Kamsky (the eventual winners) each knocked each other out in one of the cycles. They were not perfect, but were certainly much closer to the traditional candidtate's matches than anything we've seen since.

<but then chose Kramnik in 2000! He seemed determined to not play a match with Shirov, despite having a bunch of wins (can't remember how many at the time) and zero losses against him. Kasparov wasn't afraid, I don't think, I think he said "well, Kramnik is higher up on the rating list, so he should get the match." I love Kramnik, but that's not right.>

What actually transpired was somewhat different. Please read:

Check out http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/989...

Quite recently, Kramnik himself has addressed the situation and its aftermath:

For that matter, imagine if the winners of each conference played the runners-up from the opposite conference, instead of each other -- how would you know who was the real champion?

Well, that's very interesting interesting. Originally you said

<Garry's selection of opponents is a blemish on his championships 1993-2000, so surely you can see why the FIDE championship also diminished in value. Neither the PCA nor FIDE had all the world's best players. No one could say with certainty that he was the best or even that he had beaten the best.>

But now you say that it is not about who Kasparov played against, but only Kasparov himself. All right.

There are two major problems with your analogy:

1. The AFC and NFC fields are mutually exclusive. For the most part, the PCA and FIDE fields were comprised of the same players- especially the strongest ones (for instance, both winners participated in both cycles).

That is to say: both the PCA and FIDE challenger could have been the same player, and almost were (Anand collapsed, albeit against a very strong Gata Kamsky, in the FIDE cycle).

Given that fact, what basis do you have for comparing the PCA and FIDE candidates to the AFC and NFC in the first place? What makes them similar at all?

2. Unlike in football, the champion does not even participate in the playoffs; therefore it is a mistake to compare Kasparov with a conference champion. When you say "For that matter, imagine if the winners of each conference played the runners-up from the opposite conference, instead of each other -- how would you know who was the real champion?" not only do you make it seem as if there were two separate sets of players, you make it sound as if Kasparov managed to prove himself against only one of them.

There was only one strong player who was prevented from playing against Kasparov because he was excluded from the 1994 cycle: Anatoly Karpov. After the two Ks managed to win their matches, they were supposed to play each other yet again (Kasparov had already defended his title from Karpov's challenges three times, before the difference in their strength became even greater). Alas (or perhaps for Karpov's sake, thankfully), the dawn of FIDE's KO era interfered with these plans.

The tie-break playoff, a pair of <blitz> games <not rapid> was in accordance with this clause in Article 10 of the tournament regulations: "If there are only two players tied for the first place, they will play two 5 minute games. If they are still tied, they will play an Armaggedon game (5 minutes for white and 4 for black; if they draw, then black wins)."

<"I thought that with time Garry could ‘digest’ his London defeat and would become more objective with the passing years, but I see that this isn’t happening. That’s why after Vishy Anand recently provided me with a certain amount of free time, I decided to use it to explain my position on various issues to the readers concerning the ‘newest’ chess history...">

My point was only that GK didn't play in the FIDE tournaments, so FIDE did not have <<all> the world's best players>.

Obviously, my AFC/NFC analogy falls apart under a literal interpretation (many do). It was only meant to illustrate a scenario in which a team attained a championship despite not competing against <one> very important competitor. Chess handles its championships unlike most other sports -- perhaps I'd have done better with tennis?

Until the digital era we were technologically handicapped to address this problem (cost)effectively, but now that it has become available - why do we still use such anachronistic methods?

The easiest illustration of the problem is the following position, where Black already handicapped by being a move behind is to play the Queen check in the maximum 5 move(9 half moves)forced checkmate mate sequence of the Philidor (or ---)smothered mate.

As the queen is being sacrificed the flag falls( be it prior to classical time controls or one of the accelerated forms) it is categorically absurd to give the player being check-mated the full point... at the very most perhaps as a compromise, a draw would still be more reasonable than a loss for the clearly winning player.

The problem is how do you explain something so obvious to those either incapable or more often than not stubbornly unwilling to comprehend? This problem continues to contaminate legitimate results; the argument that this inequality is the same for everyone begs the question. First and foremost being that chess is not defined under its rules to be decided by time.

Of course time is a necessary convention, but it must not contradict the finite notions of the rules of Chess. Equally absurd would be losing while effecting a fixed consecutive 3 move repetition cycle, or a 'wild rook' perpetual check situation.

Karpov was aged 58 (cp. Korchnoi that age, was no. five of the world, finally dropping out of Top Hundred at 76 in 2007).