Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

[Vlad Rekhson]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

I find him withdrawing pretty bizarre tbh. Just a bad decision in my opinion. Myself, being still a relatively new chess player this new cycle seems better than when I first started playing chess. It's nice to see most of his colleagues agree that its a strange decision and that the cycle is pretty good right now. I also find the analogy to the world cup pretty weak. Maybe he should get a publicist.

I agree Eric. What we have now, is a lot better than it used to be say 10 or even 5 years ago. I am afraid that maybe the people who suspect that Kasparov had some influence over Magnus on this are right.
If anyone had a reason to complain it was Aronian who kind of got screwed, but really didn't seem to complain about it.
Sure FIDE is corrupt and not working very well, but the same can be said about pretty much any international organization. UN is a well known mess, but so are major sports organization. FIFA seems to have a good system determining who would qualify to the world cup, but everything surrounding it, such as determining who would host the world cup is very corrupt. The world Basketball Association-FIBA, is also pretty crazy and they like to change their regulations as to who will get into their major competitions half way through just like FIDE, and the corruption in professional boxing is well known as well.
On the other hand, in this format of FIDE WC, pretty much all the top players were supposed to participate and there were really no serious outsiders, would have been a lot more interesting with Magnus, but oh well...

I guess one question that remains is who would replace Magnus. Since its probably in Russia, I would bet on Grischuk, but FIDE may decide to go back to some super old rating list to determine that, so who knows maybe Kirsan would like to appease Karpov and invite him as the highest rated based on, I don't know the 1980 list? :)

[Laurentiu Grigorescu]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

Your bet was correct! Grischuk will replace Carlsen, as announced by Chessbase.com
Carlsen's argumentation was in some points valid, however the way he did it raises questions about his ethics. Not an attack on Anand? Why should Anand lose WC privileges that all others before him had? Would not this in itself lead to a devaluation of the title? Anand is probably the most challenged WC is history, and he proved being above all in all formats possible. Despite tennis, where No.1 ranked player is viewed as best, chess is different. All previous WCs, even if they held the title for a year, were among the active elite for decades. Carlsen has a lot of work before him to earn such honours.

[David McTavish]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

Your bet was correct! Grischuk will replace Carlsen, as announced by Chessbase.com
Carlsen's argumentation was in some points valid, however the way he did it raises questions about his ethics. Not an attack on Anand? Why should Anand lose WC privileges that all others before him had? Would not this in itself lead to a devaluation of the title? Anand is probably the most challenged WC is history, and he proved being above all in all formats possible. Despite tennis, where No.1 ranked player is viewed as best, chess is different. All previous WCs, even if they held the title for a year, were among the active elite for decades. Carlsen has a lot of work before him to earn such honours.

I don't agree. Carlsen has proven for nearly three years that he is the dominant force in Super-g ( not skiing:))events. Look at the last 20 elite events the Norwegian has played in. Won every one.What's left to prove?Bypassing to a match w. Anand seems fair. If Vishy irrationally gets over his fears and succumbs to a big Magnus payday, and Carlsen wins, where does this leave FIDE's cycle?Perhaps Timman and Karpov will revert as Vice-Champions.

[Frank Dixon]

Re: Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

GM Carlsen has made himself the People's World Champion, by his tremendous stretch of outstanding chess!! :)

Sad to say, but by withdrawing from the World Championship cycle at this stage, Carlsen has essentially made FIDE look very bad in the world's eyes, as a result of FIDE's frequent incompetence and direction-changing, and its sometime corruption. FIDE's leadership may even be bright enough to figure that out now. Whether anything will change anytime soon with FIDE is another question; I'm not optimistic on that front.

Referring to an earlier post on this thread, I offer an example of a world sports governing system which is NOT corrupt: the ruling groups for golf. There is an international federation of professional golf tours, overseen by professional administrators, advised by golf experts and successful businessmen, and accountable to the many corporate sponsors which fund the sport. Then there are several important golf governing bodies, such as the United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which regulate rules, and run amateur golf (and some professional golf as well). Then, many countries have their own association of golf professionals, who work at the club level. All of these groups cooperate quite harmoniously at the present time; it hasn't always been so! While chess certainly has the more advanced and more correct world ranking (rating) system (golf's ranking system is based on high school arithmetic, while chess's is based on mathematical statistics), golf is by far the best-governed sport in the world. :) :)

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

What's left to prove?

To win the World Blitz championship soon :D

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Carlsen drops out of world champshionship cycle!

I don't agree. Carlsen has proven for nearly three years that he is the dominant force in Super-g ( not skiing:))events. Look at the last 20 elite events the Norwegian has played in. Won every one.What's left to prove?Bypassing to a match w. Anand seems fair. If Vishy irrationally gets over his fears and succumbs to a big Magnus payday, and Carlsen wins, where does this leave FIDE's cycle?Perhaps Timman and Karpov will revert as Vice-Champions.

Does anyone know Carlsen's career earnings from chess?

Does it come anywhere close to Jonathan Duhamel's earnings from poker?

Stranger than fiction: Carlsen leaves chess altogether to take on professional poker. He disses chess and embarks on a long struggle, financially and emotionally, to prove that prowess in chess can somehow correlate to results in poker.

Would make a great Disney movie.