It's Blitz Chess.

Seriously, I remember years back at a chess club discussion, somebody quoted Lasker's well-known maxim about how "on the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long." Somebody laughed and said "I guess he never played blitz chess." True. In blitz chess, less than best moves (i.e. lies and hypocrisy) not only survive, they win games. Take a situation where your opponent has 10 seconds, and you have 30. The best move may be to repeat moves and take a draw. But in that situation, the winning strategy might be to make a losing move, knowing that your opponent can't possibly win in the 10 seconds he has left.

A lot of arguments are basically like that. People make bad arguments, knowing that they're bad, trusting that the person they're talking to won't be able to spot the flaw. Or if he does, that they'll be able to divert, misdirect, change the subject, or otherwise avoid it. In short, very much like blitz chess.

Want to show me the statistics on that. Because I certainly don't believe it.

"2. To become world champion, you have to beat the defending world champion in a match, or some length."

Unfortunately, only one person get's to try every couple of years. And since the method of selecting that person is virtually worthless in determining the best candidate, it means that the championship itself is meaningless.

"3. Until Magnus Carlsen has enough confidence to jump into the fray,"

IMHO, it is the quality of chess that sets aside the World Championship matches. We see a lot of deep theoretical analysis and novelties unveiled. Its like those rare cosmic events that happen once in a few years and is a must watch for every astronomer or maybe its like the showdown after months of intense training like in those Rocky Balboa movies that I loved as a kid.

Let the Anand-Gelfand match also live upto (or fail) that criteria before we shoot our mouths off.

And maybe the idol worshippers can compile how much their respective Gods have contributed to our knowledge of Chess instead of beating their hollow chests needlessly.

What's Karpov's contribution to Ruy Lopez? How has Kasparov changed the way some openings are played? What's the contribution of Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Carlsen and Aronian to Chess Theory? Anyone with such stats? Anyone?

Ah but here's the rub, the black players must be playing EVEN BETTER...

Each year this happens: no encumbents, no players sitting on their prep. Make it two years is you want.

An historical example is the '88-'89 World Cup. The only thing that would have to be added is a match between the top two, Kasparov and Karpov, at the end of it, instead of a whole separate candidates cycle of matches later.

In this sense, FIDE's last cycle was pretty close. I think they simply had too many slots at the end (9 total; 8 candidates and the WC) Limit it to 2 (or maybe 4) with no incumbent.

The days of Kasparov deciding who the champion will defend against are over.

History remembers who was world champion, not who was playing better in this or that year, or who had the higher ELO.

Ah but here's the rub, the black players must be playing EVEN BETTER...>

That doesn't make any sense since that's the only possible way to win a qualifier; even if each match was 10 games long, it still wouldn't change the overall structure>

Gelfand beat both Grishuk and Mamedyarov in the classical games, so what the hell are you even talking about?

<NO - 10 games match as opposed to 4 games match - it would change the overall structure completely, and that's the whole point.>

That's completely wrong once again! The fact is that all of the participants in the candidates were very close in strength and ratings. Therefore, even if the matches were 10 games long, the most probable outcome is still a draw. Thus they would still have to play blitz to decide the winner. In other words, the format would not really be effected that much.