Gandalf - the case against

The four top players of the last dozen years are Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik and Topalov. It's more than fourteen years since Gelfand won against any of them, and that was Topalov, who has been losing considerably more games than the others and was clearly weaker before 2005 than afterwards.

Gelfand never won against Kasparov but lost more often than he drew, and he hasn't beaten Anand in a classical game of chess in 18 years. Counting all formats it's 15-1 to Anand after 1993, the loss being a rapid game played when Anand was preparing for his match against Kramnik.

Also against some other players Gelfand's stats are unimpressive for a challenger. The last years he has played eight games against Radjabov, who doesn't win too often, and Gelfand scored 0 wins, 5 losses, 3 draws. He has a big minus also against Morozevich, a player that has bad stats against all top players.

Kramnik and Anand have been harshly criticized for their tournament results, even if both won Linares as World Champions and reached 2800+. In all Kramnik has won Dortmund 9 times, Anand has won Wijk 5 times and was second behind Kasparov three years in a row with excellent results (+6 wasn't enough to win in 1999). 1998-2008 Anand and Kramnik were first or shared first three times each in Linares. 

Gelfand has never won any of these super tournaments and lately it hasn't looked as if he ever will. He finished last in his latest starts in all of them except Dortmund, where he was second to last with a winless -2 just ahead of Naiditsch. In Linares it was also a winless -2 while it was -3 in Wijk in his latest starts there. He has scored better results now and then, as in Mexico 2007, but those are exceptions and in the Grand Prix tournaments 2008-10 he didn't reach a total plus score.

Gelfand has never won a tournament where the top players participated, but just over ten years ago he won one where the top five was absent. On the rating lists of 2011 Gelfand has been outside the top 15 and it's questionable if he will return to the top 10 considering all the young improving players and the fact that Gelfand will be 44 years old when the title match is played. Last year Gelfand lost against Inarkiev, Eljanov, Wang Hao, Vachier-Lagrave, etc, in all 14 losses.

All this doesn't mean that Gelfand is without chances, in a single match almost anything can happen, as Euwe and Schlechter showed. What is hard to deny though is that Gelfand wouldn't be seen as one of the greater World Champions if he does win. His career results on the whole are a couple of levels below those of previous title holders.

That was interesting but I am disappointed there was no Gandalf tie-in.