Antillian wrote on 11/27/06 at 20:23:49:

Or as his own usual comment runs: "It is in the contract"

The three matches I look forward to the most in the first round are #2 Leko-Gurevich (watch for Gurevich to play Leko extremely tough); 7.Polgar-Bareev (Bareev is one of my favorite players).

The third great match will be 8.Shirov-anybody.   

Then again Adams-anybody would also be great.  Hang on, how about Shirov-Adams!  That would be a dream match!  Maybe Shirov will have shaken off his anger at Kasparov and Kramnik by then and will be able to play chess again.

Actually Aronian/Carlsen/Shirov/Adams is a harder bracket to call than I was giving credit for. I guess you have to go with Aronian, but Mickey's a tough customer, and Carlsen is dangerous too, of course.

I predict an escalation of Kamsky´s comeback - he has settled back into top-class chess quicker than everyone expected, and I have no doubt he can keep up the progression....

I’ve got nothing against it, and FIDE and indeed Kramnik can call the winner what they like, but to be the man you’ve got to beat the man, as far as I’m concerned. If it’s the end of the proper world championship, then so be it, but it’ll never be anything more than just another Linares.

As to the qualifiers, the toughest bracket to call is Gelfand/Kasim/Kamsky/Bacrot: in the rest I agree Aronian, Leko and Ponomariov are big favourites. As it happens I can’t even recall the format, but on the assumption it’s six game matches and then rapids I suppose I’d just agree with Gelfand. Although I’m not sure how much cop he is at rapids; Kasim’s shown in the past how tough he is in knockouts.

I am not looking forward to another Kramnik match. A strong round robin tournament is more attractive I think.

One unfortunate fact about the pairings:
It is impossible that both Leko and Polgar go through to the top 4. If both win their first match, they will meet each other in the second round   

My guess for the top 4:
Leko, Aronian, Pomariov, Gelfland

The original candidate matches (scheduled for october 2006) are on again:
If everything goes accordint to the original plan the following matches were to be held in May 2007:

   
    Pairings
     1      Levon Aronian      Magnus Carlsen
     2      Peter Leko      Mikhail Gurevich
     3      Ruslan Ponomariov      Sergei Rublevsky
     4      Boris Gelfand      Rustam Kasimjanov
     5      Etienne Bacrot      Gata Kamsky
     6      Alexander Grischuk      Vladimir Malakhov
     7      Judith Polgar      Evgeny Bareev
     8      Alexei Shirov      Michael Adams

The winners will play another match to determine the top 4:

The final top 4 will go to mexico to be joined by:
Kramnik, Anand, Svidler and Morozowich.

So its confirmed: No Topalov in this cycle.......
unless Kramnik declines to play. After all he objected
to this form to determine the world championship.

I wonder who will be in the top 4?