gewgaw wrote on 11/06/10 at 13:00:02:
If I were his father, I´d press him to play for the championship. In a couple of years, maybe another prodigy appears and dominates the scene and magnus spoilt his chance. Sometimes a teenager needs some guidance. ^^
Very droll. If I were his father, really, I'd be thinking the effect on a 19-year old of the almost unimaginable sustained pressure of a world championship match cycle, far greater than that of a major tournament, or even of, say, an Olympic gymnastics championship. Read
From London to Elista for a harrowing account of this phenomenon, which often brings contestants to the verge of mental and physical collapse. In his first match against Korchnoi Karpov lost 22 pounds. As a chess fan I would love to see Carlsn play, but as a father I would certainly support this decision.
In the normal course of events, five years from now Kramnik and Anand will be weaker and Carlsen should be much stronger--the physiological course of the human organism virtually guarantees that. In several years, if he works hard, Carlsen may not be
primus inter pares at all, but rather the clearly dominant player in the world, and thus may be able to arrange a match with the sitting champion on his own terms, whether FIDE likes it or not.
On the other hand, the rationalization given by Carlsen--and it is clearly that, whatever his true motives might be--is indeed arrogant, and taken at face value would seem to challenge the legitimacy of the mode of determining the world champion that prevailed from Steinitz until Kasparov.