Anand on Candidates: "Most likely I won't play"

Shut up, "dude". He wen't as far as you probably will ever go.

Look up Borislav Ivanov, and then keep scratching your head if that's not enough.

Yeah, after all, he was only world champion for... huh... some time, until very recently.

I suppose Kramnik, Aronian, Svidler, etc. are all good for trash too.

As already said, not coming to Candidates is just a rational decision from Anand. No magic or psychological reason.

Fixed for you.

At least Anand actually showed up to defend his title. Which puts him light-years ahead Fischer right there.

Extreme.  I believe things should be slightly more balanced than that.

"I suppose Kramnik, Aronian, Svidler, etc. are all good for trash too"

Saying that Anand isn't strong enough to win the toughest tournaments nowadays isn't the same thing as saying that he is "trash". There are many other very strong players that just like Anand haven't won a tournament on that level for many years. Aronian and Kramnik obviously doesn't belong to that group though.

Anand has usually taken many months off after his title matches. This time, in spite of the Candidates coming up in less than three months, and the title match just being a month behind him, he has already played one rapid event and is scheduled to play two top tournaments in January and February. Then the Candidates start in the beginning of March. It won't be easy for him if he does decide to play, but maybe he will.

Tournaments only have one winner and just saying whether someone won a tournament or not, is in not a good indicator of strength.  

Gelfand won the prior candidates and Anand did pretty well against him.  He also didn't do too bad against Carlsen.  

Combined with the huge luck factor of tournament systems Anand would have almost as good of a chance as any.  

The huge luck factor? The Candidates/World Championship tournaments have been won by Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov (twice), Tal, Petrosian, Topalov, Anand and Carlsen. All of them favourites or at least very close to being the favourites, and best players in the world (Bronstein possibly excepted even if Chessmetrics ranks him as #1 when he drew the title match against Botvinnik).

Minimatches is another thing, with winners like Khalifman, Kasimdzhanov, Ponomariov and Gelfand, who none of them were expected to finish in the top 5 and none of them ever have been close to be the best player in the world. 

I don't see Anand winning the Candidates, but it would be fun if he did. If the usual trend with the rating favourite winning continues it will be Aronian that plays Carlsen in the autumn, but some time an outsider ought to win a tournament Candidates.

I doubt that Gelfand can outplay any other player in a match, his latest wins against for example Kramnik and Topalov came in the middle of the 1990s, almost 20 years ago, and he has four losses and one draw in his last five against Carlsen. Against Kasparov he had an awful lot of losses and a few draws but no win. Even if Gelfand did well in the match against Anand, the latter has dropped a lot in strength the last years. Maybe he could outplay Nakamura in a match though :-)

He never really managed to handle Radjabov's KID though:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?yearcomp=exactly&year=&playercomp=white&pid=13847&player=&pid2=49796&player2=&movescomp=exactly&moves=&opening=E60-E99&eco=&result=

"your point is what?"

fabelhaft, you post the best stuff.  If Kramnik is the reason why the KI was on its deathbed, then Gelfand is the reason why the KI is still kicking.

Wouldn't worry about that comment. Is not a chessplayer on here opinion therefore irrelevant.

Going by the link you posted Gelfand has +38 -19 =46 (59%) with white against the KID. Most top players seem to be in the high 60s percentage wise: Kramnik has +49 -10 =44 (69%), Topalov +22 -4 =24 (68%), Carlsen +13 -4 =9 (67%), Radjabov +10 -2 =11 (67%), Ivanchuk +42 -12 =34 (67%), Nakamura +9 -4 =2 (67%), Anand +9 -3 =7 (66%), Aronian +27 -12 =23 (62%). Kasparov had +34 -5 =12 (78%).

Fabelhaft I think you post pretty logical stuff but here are a few things to consider:

1) Yes the ratings will tend to match up with tournament results because we almost exclusively see people playing tournaments.   When you then all of a sudden switch to a match format where a draws become much less painful and a loss much more painful then you can often find you are selecting people in the wrong way.

2) Even if we look at the ratings and assume they are the gold standard, and that people will always play to their rating and completely ignore the different format. (which you seem to be doing in your analysis)  You can run the numbers and see that aronian will likely *not* win.  

3) The people you mention won tournaments and you say they were favorites or close to it. (of course all the candidates were pretty much close to it)  That could be but when you look at other such tournaments such as linares or dortmund or whatever we see that the winners vary quite a bit.

4)  Look at the actions of Kasparov after he lost to Kramnik.  Before the match he insisted that the loser would have to play in a tournament to qualify for the match.   But after he lost he surely realized that even though he would have been the "favorite" it would still be a complete crap shoot for him to win the tournament.    So despite the fact that Kasparov was basically given the green light to pick any sort of format he wanted he still refused.  

The bottom line is that in todays world where there are so many good players at the top, if you want to choose the best challenger to compete in a match against the champion you need to have a series of matches to reliably sort out the top of the top.  

take risk to be humiliated? he only lost his title you have this feeling he was humiliated and he was desperately trying to organize a rematch which kramnik refused. kasparov was disappointed by FIDE incapability to organize a fair system for qualifying a challenger. kasparov was #1 and he showed his superiority till his retirement. then he decided he had achieved everything in chess and he needed to do something different in his life.

 I believe he has less than 10 percent chance to win. his results have been very bad recently.

 he can participate and enjoy playing in a prestigious tournament. he won't have such a chance anymore in his life.

I think he said that in order to study English and improve his grammar.