I thought that about poker, until I studied it seriously. There's so much depth in maths alone in terms of pot odds, implied odds, before you get into more complicated EV calculations, and even that doesn't take ranges into account. Then you have the specific situation, your position at the table, the tournament situation, blind structure. Then there's the psychology, your image at the board etc. Then you have to think about the range of cards your opponent might have, how they have played them in the past, the percentage chance of each and how your cards perform against that range. Given all that, it's only enough if your opponent isn't trying to mislead. It's incredibly deep. And even if you know it all, it's so testing in terms of patience, mentality, nerves etc.
Is it a disaster if Anand wins the candidates tournament?
Well, good points. Although it seems like the difficulty is of a more tedious nature, you know what I mean? I mean, memorizing one million digits of pi is probably harder than being Carlsen, but it's of a much more mechanical nature -- e.g, something computers could still do, and better 
. I wouldn't necessarily appreciate the former less, because it would be incredible, but certainly in a different way.
I think there's still a lot of scope for creativity, but probably a lot of poker players will tell you it can be a grind.
I don't know if any is harder, I just wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of being truly good (and consistent) at poker.
I'll just say, 2700 player chess analysis sounds a lot deeper than professional poker player analysis (yes I've heard both 
) The latter can sound deep too, sure, but it's nothing like the former. Not saying that's proof, but it does corroborate my general feelings.
For instance, Peter Leko at Tata Steel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGRjs7e6B8w
Maybe, but they wouldn't be telling you all of their thoughts or experience. I've read books that go into pages of detail about one hand, where they could expand each comment into far more detail, or breakdown down the maths further, but a lot of it is ingrained. They analyse hands away from the table so that when playing they know what percentage chance their hand has against a group of cards that the opponent may hold. They wont expand on that in detail in commentary, they would just tell you that they put him on worse.
I don't actually disagree with you, but it takes a phenomenal amount of work and analysis/experience to make 'easy' poker decisions. Maybe when you're at the table it's not as difficult, but only because of the work you've already put in. And it takes a wide range of skills.
Yeah I know poker is hard too. The funny thing though is that Leko is talking that long even with all of that ingrained knowledge. He'll still say things like "the king is coming," and he'll know when that's good and when it's not. We're not even hearing any of that extra stuff that is deep in his unconscious. I think chess has both depth and width -- it's hard to know which one is crazier because they're both so high. You could spend hours analyzing a crazy position, yet at the same time you have to know so many different positions so well in the course of just a single game.
Another point is that we don't know how important those poker considerations you listed are -- like how much difference they would actually make. I'm sure you could spend a lot of time thinking: if I have these two cards, and I'm playing five people who also have two cards, what are the chances there are still two kings in the deck, or two queens, or a seven of spades and a five of hearts -- but it's not clear if any of those random questions are important. In fact, you could ask those sorts of questions in a game of crazy eights if you really wanted to 
Aaaaaaaaaand it's been compared to Crazy Eights. Let's leave it there.
It's a good point. Actually my brother would do paranoid things like that when he played crazy eights. He can, indeed, overanalyze and make the game hard if he wants, yet his results were no better than mine.
Poker is a hard game, but it's plausible that people may inadvertently make it harder than it needs to be. The same applies for chess too I guess, but probably not as much.
Chess is hard and so deep. After 70 years games like Capa vs Tartakower(famous rook endgame) is still being analyze. Poker can be hard, but definietly not on the level of chess. Can you imagine one poker game being analyze for 70 years.
With chess if you don't have an idea about it, and you study it for one hour,you will not beat chess players who played it for years. I learned poker for few minutes, and then beat players who played it for years.
"Can you imagine one poker game being analyze for 70 years."
Person A: Hey, you guys had it all wrong for all these years! He clearly should have checked on that one hand.
Person B: No no no, don't you remember the look on that guy's face? The consensus for decades is that he had to bet, you're just ignorant.
Do poker players remember that stuff with all the hands they play?
He said what he meant to say.
This. I'm not saying that chess players make better poker players than everyone else. Accountants, actuaries and economists would make good poker players too. The hard poker skills like pot odds and the like. I would expect a very good correlation between chess masters becoming poker masters though.
There's also a lot more money to be made in poker. The World open has a top prize of $20K in the open section. The North American open has a top prize of $10K. US Championship is $30K. The winner of the WSOP takes home $8M to $10M. Huge difference.
To make money in poker, you sit down at your computer and start playing for money. In the US there are more barriers to entry, but the idea is the same.
In chess, you have to fly around to tournaments all over the country to have a chance at making a couple grand, set up a teaching practice or write books. It's more involved and you already have to be good to do those things.
There aren't really any equivalents to casinos in chess that allow a chess player to move there and play chess tournaments professionally. In poker you can live in Vegas or Atlantic city and play poker "OTB" professionally as well as online.
Do poker players remember that stuff with all the hands they play?
Oh, absolutely yes. There are poker post mortems just like in chess. Heck, go to any serious poker player you know and ask him about bad beats.
One problem with Norway as organiser is probably that they don't have that much money and already spend many millions on the Olympiad just before the title match is supposed to be held. They would probably prefer to hold the title match instead now, but with funding problems having both seems impossible.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Norway probably has the money. It's more a question of how much will there is to actually fund two large chess events in one year. From what I've heard the Carlsen-Anand match was broadcast on national TV and recieved great response, but chess is still small in Norway and they just might not be ready to host the Olympiad and the WC in one year.
There are money in Norway, but it goes in other directions. Chess has been a small thing in Norway, but its getting more and more attention. With more attention, money might go our way.
Quote above: "Chess has been a small thing in Norway, but its getting more and more attention. With more attention, money might go our way. "
Yes. Indeed. I think "Chung Mee" put it best in the groundbreaking 1985 film Volunteers, when he said:
The bridge mean more traffic. More traffic mean more business. More money mean more power.
Here is an article about the minister Thorhild Widvey. She is hard. She says, sloppy translated: "You didnt make it, you cant just come and ask for more money. You said you should get sponsors, but failed."
http://www.vg.no/sport/sjakk/widvey-slaar-tilbake-mot-sjakk-ol/a/10123440/
I will say that I think chess is much more intellectual. I think poker is intellectual, but not as much. There are things to consider in poker, but it's just hard to match the depth with chess. With chess almost every position has its own nuances; poker can find nuances within the confines of certain kinds of hands, reading the opponent's tendencies, etc, but it's hard to actually beat chess regarding depth. Rook endgames, queen endgames, bishop vs knight endgames, quiet middlegames, sacrificial attacks, Nd5 sacrifices in the sicilian, the king's indian pawn structure, the queen's gambit exchange variation, the english opening, queen vs rook checkmate, exchange sacrifices, all of the dozens of tactical patterns and being able to apply them constantly in almost any kind of position -- it just goes on, and on, and on in its richness. Practically all of those things I just listed are quite distinct from each other too.
Chess and tennis also seem to correlate a lot. It certainly does in my case.