I like Ushenina and her fighting spirit impressed me, but when the top players are eliminated so quickly it's less convincing imho.

Longer matches would reduce the randomness of the formats results, if you plug expectations into an elo calculator you will see its almost arbitrary who will win, as match length increases it will consistently increase the stronger players chances.

Actually if you examine the arguments closely, you'll find that you agree with me. <HeHateMe> is saying Ushenina's not really the World Champion because he thinks the FIDE system sucks.

Be that as it may, these are two completely different and unrelated issues.

Even in the open world championship, we have a champion that almost everyone acknowledges is not the best player in the world, yet no one disputes he is the actual official world champion, now that the title has been unified.

The World Championship is a formally agreed process of elimination under universally recognised and acknowledged rules, and the last person standing is the world champion, officially and indisputably.

On the one hand, people (eg Carlsen) complain about the "privileges" of the incumbent champion when everyone else has to fight their way through all the levels of competition for the privilege of challenging for the title in a match, while the champion is apart from the whole process until the title match commences.

On the other hand, when everyone is put in the same boat as in the knockout contest, it's too "random".

You can't keep everyone happy as the never ending discussions on the subject of the best format for the World Championship cycle shows.

I know what you're saying. Everyone can have a senior moment, including the likes of Kramnik when he conceded a mate in one. The numerous blunder collections on this site show how common they are, even amongst top GMs, eg: Game Collection: The Top 10 Greatest Blunders Ever

So I'm not sure it's really fair to single Ushenina out for one bad game.

In any case, she picked up from there. Later in the year, she was an undefeated =1st in the Women's National Championship, an undefeated bronze medalist at the Women's Olympiad, and then mowed down the opposition to win the world championship.

>

It applies, because the 64 player "lottery" is an inferior way of nominating a world champion. It matters not that this happened during the Kasparov provoked schism. It is an inferior process, regardless of the circumstances.

The men don't use this nonsensical giant tournament, and serious female chessplayers shouldn't be stuck with it, either.

If your answer is Kramnik, then please tell me how Ponomariov (or anyone else) was supposed to get invited to the Dortmund 2002 qualifier. Rating? Well, that's not a "world championship," if ONLY the highest-rated players can compete.

<If your answer is Kramnik, then please tell me how Ponomariov (or anyone else) was supposed to get invited to the Dortmund 2002 qualifier. Rating? Well, that's not a "world championship," if ONLY the highest-rated players can compete.>

If your answer is Ponomariov, why do a series of joke minimatches against mostly weak opposition make him a world champion?

And why does only having the strongest players make a world championship not legitimate? It is obvious to me that such a world championship would be completely legitimate (not claiming that Dortmund achieved that ideal), and the FIDE knockouts were a complete joke.

Speak for yourself.

<If your answer is Ponomariov, why do a series of joke minimatches against mostly weak opposition make him a world champion?>

Joke minimatches? Even if you don't like that the matches were Best-of-2 (up to the Semifinals), the winner still has to win SEVEN such matches in a row.

Also, let's see who Ponomariov eliminated: after facing the lowly Li Wenliang in Round 1 he eliminated Tiviakov, Ki. Georgiev (highest rank #9 in the world and #17 at the time), Morozevich (#4), Bareev (#9), Svidler (#17), and Ivanchuk (#7) (4.5-2.5 in the Best-of-8 final).

In fact, the ONLY TWO top players who didn't compete in Moscow were Kasparov and Kramnik, who had just staged their own "World Championship" about a 1 1/2 years prior. And we know Kramnik earned his place by beating Shirov in a 10-game match...oh, wait.

So much for Ponomariov's "weak opposition!"

<And why does only having the strongest players make a world championship not legitimate? It is obvious to me that such a world championship would be completely legitimate (not claiming that Dortmund achieved that ideal), and the FIDE knockouts were a complete joke.>

A real World Championship is open to everyone. A competition with only top players and no other eligible players is a supertournament.

Why did FIDE come up with the elaborate process of creating zones, then having Zonals, Interzonals, etc.? To open the World Championship up to everyone.

Yes, the knockouts weren't perfect, I give you that, but the spirit of INCLUSION was present at least, which is more than can be said for the "Classical World Championship" matches held in those years.

<Hell, do a poll. Among the relatively small portion of chessplayers who even know who Pono is, not one in 50 would consider him a legit world champion.>

Thank the various chess media for that. ChessBase and others have their favorites, and these players get promoted and marketed above all others.

Anna Ushenina will play for Ukraine and it will be her first official event since she won the Women’s World Champion title.

Ukraine (4 players + 1 reserve player)

1 Ushenina, Anna (2477)
2 Lagno, Kateryna (2547)
3 Muzychuk, Mariya (2471)
4 Yanovska (Gaponenko), Inna (2405)
5 Zhukova, Natalia (2471)

She will play for Ugra, Khanty-Mansiysk. Natalia Pogonina, Baira Kovanova, Marina Romanko and Tatiana Shadrina play on the same team.