Yep...I'm wondering if we'll see a Western backlash against FIDE at some point...esp if we have more bankable stars in the West: Carlsen, Nakamura, Giri et al...prolly remain just a pipe dream but we can still dream...but the tinder must be there; there can hardly be any Western federations that aren't implacably opposed to Kirsan, can there?!

(vaguely apropos: gave my two-year old the new New in Chess yesterday to see what she'd make of it; she opened it to a picture of Kirsan, and told me: 'I don't like the funny man'...out of the mouths of babes....)

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A controversy? He declined an invitation in due time. No withdrawal, protest or anything controversial as far as I know.

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The best chess players play the best moves. This can be seen even clearer in matches, where you don't have to take risks in order to win with Black.

Good moves bring you a long way in matches as well as in tournaments.

ReneDescartes wrote on 11/06/10 at 18:41:12:

Humm, well, ähem..... There's at least one problem with this way of looking at the unconscious: Is it the one of the object or the one of the observer?   

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But on the other hand there are a lot of promising young players moving up already. In five years time Carlsen may just be one of several young top players over 2800.

gewgaw wrote on 11/06/10 at 13:00:02:


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.