Oh sorry then lite me rephrase it:

Shirov, at his peak, earned a world championship match. But, the title was being held privately by Mr. Kasparov, who cheated Shirov out of a match, and $200,000 or so of earnings.

Shirov would have lost to kasparov, just as Bronstein lost to Botvinnik. But, if not for Kasparov's dishonestly, Shirov would have a world championship match on his resume, as befits a world's top five player.>

if he beats kramnik with ease in 1998 without losing a game you still dont think he could beat kasparov in 2000?....

you would have to say that kramnik was a new player in 2000 to conclude shirov for sure would have lost in 2000...

Not really, it's just that Shirov's style never worked against Kasparov. The record was equally lopsided both before and after 2000: search "shirov kasparov"

<Games are separated using the criterion: "Have queens been traded by the 30th move (or the end of the game, depending which comes first)?" Results for <player A-player B> are presented as probabilities of <player A wins / draw / player B wins>.

<Kramnik-Topalov>
Queens not traded: 0.35 / 0.45 / 0.20
Queens traded: 0.30 / 0.67 / 0.04

<Shirov-Topalov>
Queens not traded: 0.36 / 0.39 / 0.25
Queens traded: 0.28 / 0.48 / 0.24

<Shirov-Kramnik>
Queens not traded: 0.35 / 0.50 / 0.15
Queens traded: 0.23 / 0.59 / 0.18

<Kramnik-Kasparov>
Queens not traded: 0.19 / 0.62 / 0.19
Queens traded: 0.11 / 0.79 / 0.09

Given how close this record is, the fact that Shirov dominates Kramnik makes Kasparov-Shirov an interesting match up, though there is less data to work from:

<Kasparov-Shirov>
Queens not traded: 0.47 / 0.53 / 0.00
Queens traded: 0.57 / 0.43 / 0.00

Pranav Sharma vs. Alexei Shirov

Simultaneous exhibition, Ottawa, Feb. 11, 2010

1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 6.Be3 Rb8 7.f4 b5 8.Qc1 b4 9.Nce2 e5 10.Nf3 Nge7 11.f5 gxf5 12.Bh6 Bxh6 13.Qxh6 fxe4 14.Ng5 exd3 15.Qg7 Rg8 16.Bxc6+ 1-0

But when 16-year-old Karoly Szalay did the same thing, his celebration, if you can call it that, was much more muted.

“I went home and was really tired and went to sleep,” Karoly, a Grade 11 student at Lisgar Collegiate, said Saturday.

The two were the only ones to defeat Shirov during the contest, which saw the Latvian grandmaster take on <36 of Ottawa’s best chess players >simultaneously. Players paid a fee to participate in the “simul” match.

While both young players were delighted by their success against one of the world’s top players, their response reflects the difference in their ages and chess accomplishments.

<Karoly is the Canadian under-16 champion.> Last year, he defeated older players to capture the Ottawa Chess Club championship. He started playing chess about a decade ago and has already achieved master status in Canada.

Pranav, in Grade 7 at Glashan Public School, was introduced to chess by his best friend, Agastya Kalra, five years ago. He’s played in more than 30 tournaments, most against adult competition.

Chess players are ranked by points they accumulate by winning matches. To become a master in Canada, a player needs a rating of 2,200 or more. Karoly already has 2,356, according to the chess federation website. Pranav has just over 1,500.

How did two young players with such varying skills manage to beat one of the world’s top grandmasters? Both credit their tactics in part.

“I played a tactic which I guess he didn’t see,” says Pranav. “He kept playing the way I wanted him to play, so I just went along with that. Then I used my tactics, and I beat him.”

Karoly used an opening he had studied a year ago when preparing for another match. Shirov, he says, “recognized it instantly. It was pretty neat playing him, since he knew the opening, and just rattled his moves off really fast.”

But other factors helped level the playing field. For one thing, Shirov had just flown in from Latvia. And because he was playing 36 opponents at once, he had only a few seconds to make each move. “I get a few minutes per move,” says Karoly.

In a one-on-one game, Karoly acknowledges he’d have little chance against a player of Shirov’s calibre. “I might last a few hours, but I wouldn’t have much chance to win, or even draw.”

Even so, Karoly acknowledges, winning the match against Shirov “is still pretty good, a nice achievement.”

In need some help, who could you suggest to enrich this list of players,

Tal, Shirov, Shabalov ...

Did the elite "solve" Shirov? I don't think we'll ever again see a Shirov victory with black against someone like Kramnik as a result of a not completely sound, but terribly complicated sacrifice.

Did the Kasparov deal do permanent psychological damage to Shirov's game that he never recovered from?