I'm not defining it. I'm just saying look at how chess is played. Chess is not generally played in matches, it's played in round robins or something similar. If you're saying that Chess is not defined by how it is actually played, who appointed you to define it?

The whole damned game is a series of tactical problems!

Should Verlander go out there and throw a baseball through a tire swing before he can be awarded the Cy Young?

I agree about the match play, but we have to have a suitable way to determine who plays the match play. Unless you think that we could make a tourney of 7 game matches. For tie breaks, utilize 960 or tactical puzzles. This atleast makes it a chess activity that decides it, instead of a coin flip to see who can push their one opening they know til it wins. I realize this could be grueling, but then again, they best should be the toughest, who wins.

IMO what is ruining chess is the desire to make the game "exciting" to people that arent into chess.  Shorter time controls, shorter matches, etc.  are dooming the game.  And since when did draws become boring?  Draws are part of the game.  But with that said i do like the Sophia rule. 

Candidates matches or tournaments?  Different formats appeal to different players.  Frank Marshall a much better tournament player than match player.  

Personally...id prefer a tournament format with 4 games against each player involving the top 8 players rating wise. 

But sadly the world we live in wants "extreme", "exciting" chess with quick wins, and no draws.  Chess isnt meant to be about changing the game to make it more exciting.  Its a great cerebral game, and a battle between two people. 

As the Beatles said...Let It be...

Really the problems with the current system are numerous, but in almost every case boils down to not enough games played to ensure that the winner is the best combined tournament and match player at classical time controls. 

This is the first time in 4 months that the OP has gotten more than 6 comments on one of his many "provocative" threads.  He must be in heaven.  

Sporting organizations are notoriously corrupt.  Ditto with the scandals surrounding the olympics.

Against this backdrop, to think that FIDE (hardly a "lily white" organization) can somehow 1) reform itself, 2) devise an "objective and fair" system, and 3) implement it judiciously in order to determine the WC is just "tilting at windmills."

The current WC and the current challenger will always have a very big say on the format, timing, location, and a compendium of other factors.  Because it's so "freaking hard" just to occupy those final 2 slots.  And then the negotiations begin anew.

Both Fischer and Kasparov went up against "the system."  Did they not?

The idea of devising some kind of "objective test" for the WC, outside of social context, might be a nice, abstract, and laudable idea, but it's "a few bricks short of a load," to use a farming metaphor.  Good intentions, notwithstanding.

what makes match play so different from tournatment play?   I never realized that there was such a distinction between how good someone is at tournatment play and how good someone is at match play. 

Warbler never having played a match, and being a patzer, I"m probably not the best person to answer, but my guess would be the level and depth of specific preparation one is capable of achieving. 

OP says:  "Anand and Gelfand have gone 4-7 years without winning a tournament, even if it will continue to be said that they aren't interested in doing their best in any other events than knockout qualifications or title matches."

Is there any evidence that Anand is complicit in the way HIS title is defended?  I cannot blame him as far as I can tell...  From my little knowledge and research, it appears the Candidates tourney is flawed, but does that speak to Anand?

Ok, I have been at school all day, and unable to read the posts. Now that I am back, from a quick scan, I can see immediately that my opinion has been quoted many times and rebuked into something I never said. Here is my opinion:

Candidates Match:

I think it is wise to keep the Candidates match fairly short. This is because the sooner they can determine a champion, the sooner both WC players can prepare against the other, thus creating stronger games. A lot of preparation should lead to pretty good games.

World Championship:

The WC is a tournament whose first priority is to determine the best chess player in the world. This can be determined by a few games because dependability and solidity are some of the most important qualities of chess players. If a player hangs a pawn in every ninety-ninth game, he should be punished for it.

Next, FIDE organizes the WC to raise money for themselves and promote chess. Most people who watch this type of tournament do not want to see a 24 game long match, as they do not have time for it. In fact, if the WC was reduced to one game, then I believe the number of spectators might significantly increase. (Please note that I am not advocating a single game World Championship.)

Finally, many people think that long matches lead to more "interesting" games. This can be caused due to tactics that arise from the pressure of one final game after so many previous. However, these games are still often not the player's best. Most people play better when they are alert and unstressed. Also, many long matches can simply fizzle out.

FIDE:

However, in the end, it all comes down to what FIDE wants. Money. FIDE needs to do what will raise the most money for the corporation, and no one can stop that. FIDE stands alone as an international chess organization, and chess players must respect its decisions, or else face possible consequences. There is no reason to argue with FIDE; we can't change anything.

 Yes, Fischer wanted to replace the system with a system more favourable to himself and nobody else

I do not think that was Fischer's intention at all. What he wanted was a system that would allow him to get near the W.C. When he got that look what happened when he met the upper levels of GMs! What he achieved in the final run up to the Championship Match has not and probably will not ever again be achieved. Whitewashes like those are what will keep Fischer remembered as long as chess is played and would have done so even if he had lost the final.

Yes, around 1886

You say your not attacking me, and that I'm attacking you, but I merely asked you the same question you asked me. How does that work?

And again, I'm not saying "I get to define Chess." I'm just trying to point out that there are people here working with implicit definitions of Chess. I'm trying to start a discussion about an explicit definition of Chess. If we aren't clear about what we are trying measure skill in, we can't adequately judge different proposals for who the world champion is. I just picked what seemed to be a rational starting point (how competetive Chess is commonly played) and tried to go from there. Then you, er, not attacked me. I don't know why you're on my case for trying to discuss what the definition is, rather than on the other people who have decided what the definition is, just without saying it directly.

As for world champions of the past, I am completely lost as to where that's coming from. I am certainly not saying there is only one true way to define Chess, and in early posts I talked about different competing definitions. Even if there was a single true definition of the word (something that as a linguist I don't believe in), where have I said that means we have to do something about the world champions of the past? Definitions change, games change, Chess has changed. What may be reasonable now may not have been reasonable back then. Even if it was, the past is the past. There's nothing to do about it.

I'm just talking about the here and now. Just because something has always been done some way, doesn't mean it's the right way to do things. If it isn't, that doesn't mean we have to do anything about the past. We can just move forward.

I'm not trying to be any more aggressive than you appear to me. And I didn't directly answer your questions because I didn't find them very logical. You were asking me to defend positions that I wasn't advocating.

Curiously,  although he won hands-down the only tournament in which he played, Morphy disdained tournaments believing too much is left to chance. He felt that the only measure between two players could be made through match play.  I don't know how other champions might have felt about this.

Pick a format and make everyone, including the champ, go through it. 

It's only a matter of time before an idiot savant memorizes the ECO, informants, and various tactics/strategy/endgame books and is considered the "best" chess player even though he can't wipe his own @$$ and screams for 30 seconds when he smells peanut butter.  At that time, I guarantee the more socially "normal" GM's will complain that the savant shouldn't be able to play even though he dominates classical chess like an engine.  This is essentially the argument against classical chess and the problem with openings and "preparation".  That's what Capablanca and Fischer were concerned about when they made their chess variants, yet didn't think it diluted but rather enhanced emphasis on chess understanding.

But if one insists on tournaments to qualify for candidates to qualify for championship, then this is essentially the same as in other professional sports, where teams play each other a few times during the regular season, then have eliminations matches up to and through the championship (e.g.- basketball with 82 games in regular season, then a number of best-of-7 matches until there is only one team left standing).  

The difference in chess, however, is that in the "good ol' days", the champs were a bunch of b!+c#e$ who complained about everything, ducked each other, and made outrageous demands upon each other that stalled the game and artificially prolonged titles making some players seem greater than they were.  That's why there was that agreement to stop people like Lasker from holding his championship for 27 years; Alekhine being granted an immediate rematch with Euwe with Capablanca being sidestepped; the changes in rematch clauses with Botvinnik; Fischer's bitchy demands in 1972 and 1975; controversial stoppage in 1984, the PCA, and Kramnik/Kasparov unable to arrange a rematch.  

None of these would be issues if the format was consistent, if the champ also had to go through it every cycle, and an independent body proclaimed the conditions with authoritah (or if the pro players voted democratically on agreeable conditions and tournament location, etc).  Whatever the format, just have it the same, and have the champ go through it like everyone else EVERY single cycle.  The top guys are razor close in skill (or are they?), but the current format favors the champ and makes him seem better than he may really be.  Even though Carlsen is right about this, he is still a pansy.