Will Carlsen change the World Championship ?

By the way, Carlsen must have a match, head to head, mano a mano, a gladiators fight with Anand (or another). I want to see him in combat. Must show if he's gonna be a real World Champion or only the higher rating of all times (this is only stadistics).

I don't think that the champion should get draw odds, and be seeded into the final.  If the match system is retained, perhaps he could be seeded into the semi-final, so you don't force the champion to go through a series of lopsided matches, but still make him show his strength against at least two top players.

The thing I didn't like about Las Vegas, Tehran, Moscow and Tripoli was the fast time control and the short matches with blitz playoffs.  Too many of the favourites got knocked out early on, or refused to even play in the first place.

For San Luis and Mexico City, FIDE lengthened the time control, and made it a round-robin, so each player had a chance to recover from a bad game.  Most people seem to accept Topalov and Anand as world champions.

I hope Carlsen does push for some change.  The special rights that chess champions enjoy do seem to be pretty rare in the sporting world.

The problem with the football analogy is that while the nations remain relatively stable, the players change every four years. Chess is much more like boxing than football.

Yeah, people do it. At least in the Spanish speaking world.

Spain is the current soccer World Champion and is in fact automatically qualified for the next World Cup (unlike the other nations which have to play for their spot)

"If you want to compare chess with other types of sport, then it should be with those where there’s a one-on-one struggle – like tennis, boxing or fencing. That’s where I’d look for an analogy of how to get ready for the struggle."

- Vassily Ivanchuk -

 Carlsen is no one to change the World Championship format...If he wants to catch up with the greatest players of all time Karpov and Kasparov, he must learn to play matches.

If he wants to be a giant, must act like one...

I think its wrong to include Topalov with the other 3  of this group . Topalov at least has hung around among the top players for more than a decade , the others have not. Topalov also is one of the few to break 2800 so I think his chess " credentials " far exceed the other 3 . He also gave both Anand and Kramnik very tough matches . 

Reb, all you write about Topalov is true. But he never won a world championship match, which places him with Schlechter, Keres, Bronstein, and Korchnoi among those who came close but never quite took the crown that mattered most. 

I recognize: 11th Fischer 12th Karpov 13th Kasparov

And after that, I quit paying attention. Somewhere around 1993, 1994, I stopped being interested.

Perhaps we could call Khalifman, Anand, Ponomariov and Kasimdzhanov FIDE world rapid knockout champions.  With San Luis 2005, FIDE returned to slower time controls, so Topalov was a classical world champion in that sense.  One could I guess make a further distinction between tournament champions such as Botvinnik 1948, Topalov 2005 and Anand 2007, and match champions.  Who was the world match champion from 1948-1958?  Alekhine?

I believe that Topalov was #1 on FIDE Elo rating list 2006-7 and then again 2008-2010, so I think it would be hard to claim he was undeserving of the title.

Should be head to head. No two champions. That would be dumb.

11th Fischer 12th karpov 13th kasparov 14th Kramnik 15th Anand...

Those were the WC's... absolutely! The others... definitely not. Kasim? Pono? Please, not really... Topalov, yes maybe. He gave the guys are real run for their money.

There's nothing wrong with the current format. I really loved the candidates matches and for the tie break win of Carlsen (which I'm very thankful for)... all players agreed before the tournament started so everybody knew this could happen.

Chess has long standing traditions and I'm glad we finally came back to a match format. If any change at all I vote for 24 games ;)

Last but not least: I hope Carlsen wins. First: I really like that guy. Second: Vishy, as great as he was is just not up to par anymore. Third: A tournament playing World Champion is much more fun. (I know Vishy also plays tournaments, but less frequently and with much lesser effect)

Alekhine died in I think '49, maybe '48.

But the world was still picking up the pieces from WW2. So probably chess was low on the list of rebuilding priorites at that time.

Alekhine died in 1946.  There was talk of making Max Euwe interim champion until a new one could be found, but Botvinnik et al nixed that idea.

As I noted, Topalov topped the Elo rating list soon after his convincing victory at San Luis, so probably quite a few people thought that he was the best player in the world at that time.

Similarly, with Anand, after his victory at Tehran 2000, people were not saying that he was not worthy to be a champion.

Yup, same here.

And then somewhere around April 2013, I became interested again...

Can't wait.

Estragon's description of the history of the title in post #40 is spot on. Topalov won the right to challenge Kramnik by winning San Luis. That's how it was viewed by the contestants at the time! But he also earned a title in the process. Essentially, it would be like conferring the title of world champion to Carlsen even though the world champion didn't compete in London 2013, and Carlsen then had to play a match against the world champion. The situation was almost identical, except for the name given to the winner of San Luis.

A very interesting thread here. Thanks to the OP for starting it off !