Future Chess Tourists

Kramnik also lost a match to Kamsky at some point I believe and in his lost match with Shirov he couldnt win a single game. Did he also play a match with Gelfand ? 

I didn't know about those. Wiki says:

"In the mid- and late-90s, Kramnik, although considered one of the strongest players in the world, suffered several setbacks in his attempts to qualify for a World Championship match. In 1994, he lost a quarterfinal candidates match for the PCA championship to Gata Kamsky 1.5-4.5, and later that year, lost a semifinal candidates match for the FIDE championship to Boris Gelfand with the score 3.5-4.5. In 1998, Kramnik faced Alexei Shirov in a Candidates match for the right to play Garry Kasparov for the Classical World Chess Championship, and lost 3.5-5.5. In 1999, Kramnik participated in the FIDE knockout championship in Las Vegas, and lost in the quarterfinals to Michael Adams 2-4."

So it seems he has a pretty bad match record until the Kasparov match, but he was I think 2nd highest rated player (or maybe 3rd after Anand) when the organizers chose him as the challenger when Shirov and Anand refused the conditions, and was recognized as the possibly toughest challenger at that moment.

I don't think this bad match record before 2000 has much to do with the level of understanding of the game he reached. He is a class above Kamsky, Shirov and arguably Gelfand today.

OK, but given his overall match record I dont think he stacks up to Fischer or Karpov in match play.

Well Fischer was demolishing super GMs of the time with 6-0 in matches, Kramnik probably could never achieve that kind of domination with his style of play, so I have to agree.

Dude... until you can best Leko or any of the others on a regular basis, I would remain wisely silent.

Oh I forgot about his matches against computers. I think he had an amazing performance against them.

Funny to read this, Caruana didn't exactly turn out to be a chess tourist.