Bye-Bye Gelfand. Is It Magnus' Turn Now vs. Anand?
Now that the 2012 World Chess Championship Match is over, which to me, ends what I think was a brutal cycle, mostly culminating in the 2011 Kazan Candidates Matches but it might have originally started with Magnus Carlsen saying he wouldn't participate. That left a black cloud over the event and Alexander Grischuk's play at the board didn't help either in that tournament, which fueled much backlash once the Candidates were over. So leaving that beaten and kicked horse behind us, where do we go from here?
The 2013 Candidates Matches will in fact this time have Magnus Carlsen to contend with, but who might not be the World #1 once the event swings around. Levon Aronian has been creeping up on Magnus' throne the many past month and he'll be looking to overthrow the Norwegian GM on his way to possibly having the match of his life vs. Anand.
There are others though, perhaps not as in the running as Magnus and Levon but still contenders. They may not be able to win it, but they can definitely play spoiler.
The Top 3 of the Chess World Cup; Petr Svidler, Alexander Grischuk and the erratic Vassily Ivanchuk will be present there as well. They are flanked by Vladimir Kramnik and Teimour Radjabov. Boris Gelfand will have one more chance in the sun to win it, but honestly, not against this group.
The event will take place in March of 2013 and will be a DRR (Double-Round-Robin) event, hopefully to enforce players to not agree to such short draws (GRISCHUK!!!!!!! 
)
Here are the time controls for this event:
The time control for each game shall be: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move 61
and some additional rules, one of them being about agreeing to draws..
and the tiebreak criteria (3.7):
a) The results of the games between the players involved in the tie. If they are still tied:
b) The total number of wins in the tournament of every player involved in the tie. If they are still tied:
c) Sonneborn - Berger System.
If there is no clear winner with the above 3 criteria, there will be a special competition between the players who still remain tied after using the 3rd criteria (Sonneborn-Berger): after a new drawing of colors, each tied player will play two (2) tie-break games with the other tied opponent(s). The games shall be played using the electronic clock starting with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move.
Finally we find the following (3.9.2b)
The players cannot draw a game by agreement. A claim for a draw is permitted only through the Chief Arbiter (or his Deputy) in the cases of perpetual check, stalemate, threefold repetition, the 50-move rule or insufficient material. Other kinds of theoretical drawn positions are allowed to be claimed by one or both players through the Chief Arbiter (or his Deputy). The Chief Arbiter can then declare it, or not, as a drawn game after consulting his/her Technical Advisor.
So what do you think could, will, or might happen? Any predictions out there in Chess.com-land? Thoughts, comments, discussions...anything?
If you *do* leave a comment or a thought or two, just keep it clean please. Thank you and have a good night! 
-Mark
