Will Carlsen change the World Championship ?

Magnus Carlsen has gone on record as preferring a tournament to decide the World Championship in which the reigning WC must also play .  He thinks the WC should enjoy no special considerations and be seeded into a match for the WC once the chalenger is determined . Will he change his mind if he becomes champion ?  Time will tell ....  I for one completely oppose such a change and believe if you want to be the champ you must beat the champ head to head ... in a match ! Someone like Petrosian would likely never have been champion under a tournament format as he drew too much but rarely lost , which is great in a match but not a tournament . Geller probably would have benefitted from a tournament to determine the champion as he was much better in tournaments than in matches .  Maybe there should be 2 world champions ?  A champion of tournament play and a champion of match play ?  

I agree with your opinion - if you want to be the champion, beat the champion !! On the other hand, I don't like your last idea of two champions. The way the champion is determined right now is exactly the combination of those two. You beat the best tournament players in the tournament and then you beat the best match player in the match. The champion is absolutely worthy, no matter who is him.

Imagine something similar in tennis - 5 games Djokovic - Nadal in one week ? Or in football Brasil - Spain best to 4 wins..

I think the purity of "match play" is strengthened by the fact that you can't dismiss a loss/win by just saying "oh, he had a bad day" (or two against the same opponent in a double-round robin).

Kramnik getting shafted in the recent candidates match is evidence enough that double round-robins are not as 100% decisive (in the public eye atleast :)) as head-to-head match games.

I believe the world champion should be decided in a match as has been the norm in the past plus I think the match should be longer than the last world championship match between Anand and Gelfand. A longer match, say 24 games would allow the players to actually play for a win and give them time to recover from a lost game or two instead of the shorter match in which both players are frightened of going behind and therefore play for a draw in all the games. 

Kramnik didnt get shafted imo but considering how Shirov got shafted when Kramnik got the match with Kasparov he certainly deserves a shafting or two ...  

Chess has a tradition of world champions determined by head-to-head matches. I agree with you completely that Carlsen should not try to get rid of this great tradition. 

We don't need a "tournament" world championship. We had Kasimdhanov, Ponomariov and Khalifman as tournament champions before. It only confused things while rewarding players who were not even consistently in the top ten in the world. Tournaments are too random, match-play is much less random and far more clear-cut. 

I agree, let's keep the world championship as a match-play championship.

Does the champion have the power to change anything?

Yes, roop.

I think it's good this way with a tournament to deside the challanger and a match to deside the Champion.

Magnus's football (soccer) analogy of automatically seeding the previous World Cup winner into the next World Cup finals is somewhat misleading - people don't call the World Cup winner a world champion. People also don't call a gold medal winner a world champion. If you win Wimbledon, you're not world champion. Yes, they say that the San Francisco Giants are world champions, but that's an issue for another thread.

It's more comparable to boxing, at least in terms of having the title to defend.

So count me in along with those who oppose giving the sitting world champion no special rights.

-- Ozzie

p.s. I find it hard to take people seriously when the proposal they advocate is beneficial to themselves. Carlsen is especially good in tournaments. So he boycotts the previous cycle (which was match-based, and awful for its own reasons, again another thread), then participates when it is a tournament and advocates for the abolishment of the post-tournament match requirement.

I was in favour of a tournament for the challenger before the candidates. But now I'm not so sure anymore. When an arbitrarily chosen tiebreak system decides the challenger, I get worried.

There are too many things contenders dont have control over. I wonder if Carlsen is still so convinced that it's beter.

What does it mean, to get shafted in a chess match? Was there something unfair about it?

Will Carlsen change his socks sometime this year?

Will Carlsen change me a fiver?

I agree with REB

The World Chess Championship should be decided in One-on-One match play.

The world should pit their potentional challengers against each other, to comete and decide who the Reigning Champion's next victim will be.

They have been playing Hot Potoato with the Chess Crown for the last 13 years. Ever since Kasparov lost the title. 

Chess needs an undisputed #1 again. A Kapsarov. A Karpov. A Fischer.

Chess needs it's next dynasty.

Though it is interesting that Carlsen asking for this change is essentially making it easier for the next Carlsen to get a quicker crack at him :)

As SMØC tops the rating list he probably already considers himself to be the world champion. His last few games in the candidates seemed a bit of a struggle, lets hope he lasts the course v old man Vishy. 

>:) 

lol

People do. At least in the German speaking world.

Yes, the football analogy is correct. Spain is seen as the current world champion and there would be an outrage if they would suddenly be seeded into the finals of the next edition.

On the other hand I like the match tradition of the chess world championship and I definately hope that it will remain intact (and unified, no more two cycles please). In fact I'd prefer them to go back towards longer matches, but I doubt that is viable unless some other prodigy creates a buzz for future matches.  

I don't think Carlsen will push too much towards replacing this system, even if he's not the greatest fan.

In Football soccer the winner of the World Cup is calling World Champion by 4 years...