The King abdicates his Throne
The king abdicates his throne. I
consider
Magnus' views an abdication of his throne.
I am guessing Magnus is tired of
defending his title. I think we are
seeing Magnus’ fatigue. I can
understand his feelings, he defending it too many times in a short period of
time, 3 matches in 4 years is way too
much. We need to let Magnus enjoy his title. Fide should use Magnus to promote
the game around the world. He is the chess world’s leading diplomat. He should
only defend his title once every three years. We should return the format
designed in the late 60’s. During that period there were zonal, inter-zonal
tournaments followed by small candidate matches and culminating into a world
championship match. Magnus
assertion that world champions have special privilege and every one should have
a chance to be world champion is wrong and harmful to the world championship
process. True word champion privilege is well earned.
However, if the world champions rests on that privilege they will be
unprepared to defend their title. World
Champions Boris Spassky Vladimir Kramnik, and Vishy Anand, all lost their titles
because they let their talent decline. A
world champion’s value is based on the road taken to get there and the values of
the prior champions. Not anyone can
be world champion, world champions must be the best of their kind.
The end result of the world championship process is to match the best vs
the best of the rest. The major
issues with the Fide Knockout Tournaments are that it does not always produce
the best player. There are major
issues with this type of process: 1)
collusion of players who team up against other players 2) end result
could be determined by a thrown match. 3) You don’t have to defeat the best
players. 4) Most important you don’t
always get a champion worthy of
being in the class of Steinitz ,
Lasker,
Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian,
Spassky,
Fischer, Karpov,
Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand , Carlsen.
My
advice to Magnus is “don’t rest on your well-earned special privilege and make
sure YOUR successor is worthy of replacing you.