With Nakamura I think people often are too quick to point out his scores against Svidler et al as a sign that he is overrated. It reminds a bit of how Carlsen was seen as "weak against top players" because he had bad results against some of them when he was 15-16 years old and far from a top player himself, and it took some years to catch up to his current even scores against Anand and Kramnik.
Nakamura's career score against Svidler looks bad and is often pointed out, but it is less often repeated that Nakamura has 2-0 against Svidler the last years. Nakamura has 5-3 against Kramnik, 3-0 against Anand and 3-0 against Caruana, and only one of the best players in the world could have results like that against such players. Then he does have bad results against for example Carlsen, while the 4-7 against Aronian isn't all that bad. Aronian has after all always been ranked ahead of Nakamura, and took his first win against him when the latter was #28.
Whoever will reach a title match in the future is difficult to say anything about. Leko never reached top three on the rating list, while Gelfand only was there on a list or two more than 20 years ago. There's no reason to see it as impossible for #3 on the January 2014 list to reach a title match some time on the future. At least he will certainly win a game against Carlsen sooner or later, both draws against him in Sinquefield Cup looked rather promising.
His chances of beating Carlsen in a match are precisely zero- no more, or less than that.
agreed
Then I suppose you guys would agree to give me 20 to 1 odds against nakamura having a positive score against Carlsen when we only consider their next 12 classical games.
How much is the bet? How slow do you consider classical games to be?