When you look at interviews and stuff before and after he really went bonkers, it is clear he was a lot less sane than the next guy.

I would not characterize Fischer's thinking as "bonkers", but I would say I don't agree with it.

I would call thinking that the Jews were after him and in control of everything and that 9/11 was wonderful was bonkers.

One thing that sent him over the edge was having his storage locker auctioned off.  That has happened to many people. 

Okay, but we don't know what he means by "the Jews were after him". Who knows, maybe a Jewish person said this to him and he believed it. Could just be ignorance. Could be that he was ahead of the Internet crowd who think the Jews run the world based upon the Israeli influence in U.S. foreign policy, the weird Zionists and their history, and people thinking that Judaism is more than a belief that people have, but rather, it's some race of evil people{Of course, it could be some Christian/Jew argument which has been going on for centuries}.

He definitely was a jerk about 9/11. In fact, he was such a jerk about it that I'm not going to argue about the word, "bonkers", describing his behaviour.

"The first time in the modern world chess championships’ history that the match between the legitimate champion and a legitimate candidate won’t be a fight for the title of the strongest chess player in the world." - Garry Kasparov

This makes it sound like Kasparov believes that players who lose the qualifying rounds or refuse to play should be given a chance to play in the final.  In the 2010 Candidates tournament, Carlsen declined to play, and Grischuk knocked out Aronian and Kramnik in the quarterfinal and semi-final respectively.  Anand is the defending champion who beat Topalov in 2010.  If you want a shot at the final, I think it's only common sense that you need to win in the qualifying rounds.

Also it wouldn't have been that strange for there have to been a world championship match between Fischer and Korchnoi in 1969 or say Botvinnik and Capablanca in 1937.

Kasparov has been known to make some crazy claims. I think it has to do with having a big ego from being the best chess player in the world for such a long time, personally.

It is like the time he claimed that history needs rewritten because of some wacky claims he got from a book of questionable sources. Just chuckle at him and you can leave it at that. What else is there to do?

History is constantly being rewritten just because of the disclosure of the propaganda of those in power.

I'm not going down that conversation path with you, trysts.

The Kasparov article was crazy enough that even you would probably laugh at it, though, but who knows?

To me the rankings at Chessmetrics are in general believable (in cases like Euwe being top five several years in a row in the middle of the 1930s). Since the rating system punishes inactivity Lasker fell out of the list a few times and players like Janowski and Maroczy reached #1 when Lasker was a much stronger player, but the same thing would happen today with the Elo system.

Maybe Kasparov's (dubious) point is that there's a case to make for the winner of previous title matches being the strongest player in the world at the time of the match. If Fischer was stronger than Korchnoi in 1975 is of no significance since there was no title match. Maybe he was stronger than Korchnoi in 1978, but Korchnoi had improved while Fischer didn't play since 1972, and before that their head to head score was even.

But it's clear that not all title matches have been between the two strongest players, maybe Kasparov's use of "legitimate challengers" suggests that Janowski, Schlechter, Bogo etc weren't "legitimate challengers" in the way Gelfand is through winning the qualification.

Karpov has also said that Fischer was the favorite.

Karpov definately proved himself a more than worthy champion, though, not that anyne doubts that.

He does say that Gelfand is the legitimate Candidate and that he won't be seen as the strongest chess player in the world if he wins the match, not that he should be replaced by an "illegitimate" challenger. Anand might still be seen as the strongest player in the world by many, but he won't prove that by beating Gelfand, it would be another thing if he could win at least one tournament against stronger opposition but it's been many years since the last time that happened and at the moment I see Carlsen and Aronian as stronger players than Anand.

I hate the Yankees...but, Roger Maris was clearly the "home run king" for 37 years! 

Yeah, but Fischer stopped playing for 20 years. And also, we're all amateurs (or most of us). Fischer was the World Champion, wouldn't it be harder to get back all his chess skill? It took a few weeks for you, but imagine how much time it would take for Fischer to get back all his skill.

Im sorry but all the blitz deciding matches in the candidates tournament made a mockery of the world championship. Its like the world champ is facing off against the world blitz champ.

I don't know how anyone can claim that the Karpov vs. Timman World Championship match in 1992 was between the two strongest chess players.

Whatever is the truth about Euwe, Karpov, Fischer etc. stays hidden in the past. The baseline of the NYT article is correct - A WC match between the number 4 and the number 22 is quite ridiculous.

Maybe FIDE should rename this match to "World Championship U 2800"

When they had to play head to head with time to prepare for each other, Fischer was clearly better, despite Spassky having all the soviet players to help him prepare and come up with ideas to try against Fischer.

Karpov and Kasparov's first game.  The two games they played at the 4 Teams Match-Tournament at Moscow 1981 were 41-44 moves long.  In their encounter at Moscow International 1981, Karpov's 10...Bf5 was a theoretical novelty at the time.  The game lasted 18 moves.