Thamks for the Wikipedia link. Interesting reading. Here is a quote from the article.

"In 2010, an eight game Challenger Match will be played between the FIDE Grand Prix 2008-2009 winner and the Chess World Cup 2009 winner. The winner of the challenger match will play the defending champion in a twelve game match in September 2011."

No, they have since changed the rules halfway through the cycle so the winner of the gruelling two year series of tournaments gets one of eight spots in a knockout with among others Kamsky instead of one of two spots in a match :-)

1/ All the players were against the change, and FIDE never published the conference call as they said they would. I think they said they failed to record it properly or something like that :-)

2/ Less than a fourth supported a cycle change, and that only if it gave them more money.

<ChessVibes.Com

No, they have since changed the rules halfway through the cycle so the winner of the gruelling two year series of tournaments gets one of eight spots in a knockout with among others Kamsky instead of one of two spots in a match :-)>

With FIDE anything can happen. If they hadn't changed the cycle to begin with they could have been in a position to skip the last event entirely with the winner already certain. One reason given for the cycle change was that it might be hard to arrange all the events (since the official reserve cities were made up), and thanks to the change they now <must> arrange another event.

The negotiations failed with the sponsor that seemed to be involved in the cycle change, and decided that it should be a knockout instead of a double round robin. So it would be a practical solution for FIDE to just skip the last event that they don't have any organiser or sponsor to anyway, and skip the minimatches since they have no organiser or sponsor to them either.

Not a likely outcome, FIDE better not piss off the top players by another cycle change now.

Pissing off Carlsen too much, would be rather bad if he continue to follow the footsteps of Kasparov...

Otherwise they wouldn't have organized the " match of the losers " (Karpov vs Timman in 1993) and the infamous k.o. world "championcheap".

Think about it :

FIDE is the organization wich is not afraid of saying "the world champion is Khalifman/Ponomariov/Kasimdhzanov".

Worse, i even think that FIDE doesn't want a charismatic world champion to emmerge. Especially a popular figure among non chess fans.

The experience with Kasparov was a painful one for this mafia. It doesn't want anymore a world champion able to hold a legitimate world championship only thanks to his name.

Anand is not and will never be a wide popular figure and most of all, he's not keen on going in politic battles.

Neither is Topalov (especially with his bad reputation from 2005) who is very close to the FIDE.

And as Topalov has still a shot for the world title (things can be worsened if he would defeat Anand), any change can still occur as long as FIDE's favorite is not wronged.

<The two top winners of the Grand Prix qualify to the Candidates Stage of the World Championship cycle 2009-2011>

<The winner of the Grand Prix series at the end of 2009 will play the winner of the World Cup held in 2009 in an eight game match to become the challenger to the World Champion in a match to be held in the third quarter of 2010>

I've seen that although Kramnik is qualified for World Cup 2009 he will not play (because this event is not listed on his website).

He also said in his interview that rating is the only criteria for him to qualify for Candidates Match.

If i'm not mistaken, Kasparov and Short have taken this decision after a politic battle (on the organization of the match between them)?

No matter what the events were, instead of doing everything to keep Kasparov and Short under their juridiction, they prefered to organize the match of the losers.