If Fischer would played Karpov for the World Champion, who would win?

Did Kasparov say that about Shirov? I do remember him being highly disparaging about Alexander Khalifman and Vladimir Akopian (the finalists of the World Cup in Las Vegas in 1999). No wonder he had so few backers when Kramnik denied him a return match.

I could quibble on some points, but we agree on the most important part of your post, that the result of FIDE's recent jerking around of the world championship qualification process has been for the worse.  From 6 spots of 8 in the candidates' cycle going to the best of the national -> zonal -> interzonal sequence in 1971, and a similar 11 of 15 in 1991*, in the most recent cycle we have 2 of 8 from the national -> zonal -> World Cup knockout, 2 from the closed-shop Grand Prix, 2 by rating, 1 for the loser of the previous championship, and 1 "wildcard" for the organizers to select (I believe this one has to be over 2725 or something like that).

Say what you want about him, and I'm pretty sure it's all been said in the 100+ pages of this thread, but Fischer would have been rightly disgusted with that.

*Karpov, the losing challenger, got a bye to the quarterfinals.  I knew nothing about this until just now, but this 15-candidate structure was also used in the 1987-90 cycle, and apparently never before or since. Of course they happened to structure the candidates' that way (they tinkered with it every cycle or two back then, too) when Karpov could benefit from it.

Some background: the challenger was determined, it turned out to be Shirov and Kasparov finally played... Kramnik. And lost. Karma?

By the way, Kramnik got more than once some wildcard...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_World_Chess_Championship_2000

To be fair to Kasparov, and to my surprise (since I remembered hearing about the "chess tourists" controversy at the time), Khalifman wasn't one of the "tourists" he disparaged (Akopian was).  In describing the players left in the quarterfinals, he referred to "Two very strong players Adams and Khalifman both capable of upsetting any favorite."  See http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2013/11/origin-of-chess-tourists.htm for the full source.

This is not to say that it that it wasn't a pointlessly insulting statement in any case.

I once had a nice long chat with Shirov. I was trying to get him to come to the US for a simul and a lecture.  I asked him about whether he'd be willing to discuss the WC match (it was a couple years after Kramnik had won). He didn't say much about either Kramnik or Kasparov, but it was clear he hated and blamed both of them.

In the end, he let me know that he really didn't want to come to the US for political reasons. He was very polite about it, but he also clearly was still very upset by what had happened.

It's not particularly hard to see why Shirov got very upset, to the point of hatred of them both. Dirty business.

Susan Polgar just chimed in with her opinion on Fischer-Karpov. She has the unique perspective of having played against Fischer, Karpov, Spassky and Kasparov. She spent many hours studying with Fischer and is one of his biggest fans. 

Susan Polgar said that Fischer would have won in 1975, and she says Karpov, Spassky and Kasparov all agree that was the most likely result. She then says, "But by 1977-1978, Karpov was stronger as Fischer got older and weaker."

WHO KNOWS...... BUT BOOBY SURE DIDN'T WANT TOO FIND OUT.....

THERE IS A REASON BOOBY DISAPPEARED...... ITS CALLED ......KARPOV

Fischer was destroying 6-0, 6-0, 5-1-3D the same players Karpov was only slightly better than.

But Fischer had not been playing serious chess for a couple years and may have had a hard time vs. Karpov. Still, I don't remember any GM's in 1975 predicting Karpov would win.

hola

My counterfactual prediction of Fischer holding on to his title through to at least 1978 was based on him continuing to play. However, I would have to agree with their assessment. Without playing regularly, Fischer was probably a weaker player than Karpov by -78.

Good post.

Just consider wch match, FIDE has implemented the system. And maybe this system is not perfect at all, but theoretically any guy/lady on the planet Earth has equal possibility to attend (to get this match) if meet requirements and of corse if strong enough, so it goes WCH match may play only the one who is really good / strong enough (ok there will always be a bit of good or bad luck....)., whitch was not the case in the past, was not case even in Kasparov "era", he was excellent player but a bit unfair as a person.

if true would like to ask mr Garry who was chess player at all? Shirov was under top 5 or 10 back in 90s, very atractive player. Why mr Garry did not play the match in 98 and prove his statement, but he use dirty ways to avoid match which he already arranged before. and who was he (altough was best player on world) to decide who should and who should not play matches, and all those things.

Altough I am great fun of him as chess player, and he was brilliant, i am glad that Kramnik did not gave him rematch and actually sent him to retirement.

for Shirov, we may only regret match was not played because these two guys in second half of 90s were played brilliant attacking chess.

They should have abandoned that game and played with the board the correct way around.

Fischer was a very democratic man. Here he chats with Fidel Castro over the board!   No other chess player from the US dared to do that.

I think it would be a tough match but Fischer would win