Should the title of World Champion be shelved?

Just wondering, other than Magnus Carlsen, how many people have been ranked No.1 by FIDE on an ELO basis but never been World Champion?

Reason I ask, I just read an article by NM Matt Gaffney who suggested that the World Champion title be done away with, and that the chess world should adopt something similiar to Golf/Tennis with 4 'major' tournaments i.e. Linares, Wijk Ann Zee, etc.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/11/the_world_chess_championship_is_an_embarrassing_anachronism_it_s_time_to.html

Not sure if I agree but an interesting concept all the same. Thoughts anyone?

Take it away from FIDE (or at least Ilyumzhinov), but keep it.

I don't know, it generates quite a hype, especially if you consider the Candidates. But to be honest, I think match format is less interesting than round robin.

The current system of having 12 game matches is a joke anyway.  If they want to keep WC matches, then have AT LEAST 24 games.  

There can be only one.....

I'd also say the title of World Champion should also not be owned by the player. Some organization whether it be FIDE or not, has to retain the right to strip the title when it needs to.

The Slate article author is suggesting that if Magnus does win, Magnus could use his title as a negotiating piece to change the way top level chess is judged, which he shouldn't be able to do.

As an aside, I think there should be several types of championships in chess, blitz, bullet, rapid, classical, etc.

It is hard to fix unfortunately. 12 games is joke, when you consider that a person can become world champion with 2 wins to one with the rest draws.

Not sure what we can do though. Master players have such awesome defensive abilities that a fighting draw from a losing position can be just as exciting as a simple win. Draws are the name of the game these days.

I would still prefer 16-24 game series. Not sure about another format. I do like the idea of candidates lead-up and the match play championship.

OK, so accordingly to wiki, and with the exception of Magnus Carlsen, every No.1 ranked player by official FIDE rating (ELO ratings began in 1971) has been World Champion at some point. They are:

Bobby Fischer

Anatoly Karpov

Garry Kasparov

Vladimir Kramnik

Veselin Topalov

Viswanathan Anand

To my mind this shows that the 'World Champion' title is justified.

The article is a hot steaming pile of horse manure. 

The author wants to replace the world chess champion matches with a tennis system of ratings based primarily on 4 big tournaments. But in chess, the world champion means something, while in tennis, the No. 1 title doesn't mean a whole lot.

I bet every chess player master upwards can name every single classical world chess champion since Steinitz. Ask a top 100 tennis player to name every single world No. 1 for the past 50 years and they can't. Why not? Because in the end no one really cares that much about every single player who managed to achieve No. 1, as great players are judged on the number of grand slams won.

In chess, we care about the world champion title a great deal. Who in their right mind would want to throw away all the history and prestige of the chess world champion title for what they have in tennis?

i love playing chess.

There's a lot of undeserved romanticising around the World Championship. Most of the time the title holder just picked whoever paid well enough, or tried to avoid the strongest opponents. Lasker's greatness is more showed by his excellent tournament results decade after decade than by his beating the 32 years older Steinitz to then prefer opponents like Janowski, while for example Rubinstein never would have been able to afford a title match no matter how much stronger he was. Lasker could also go 11 years in a row twice without defending. Euwe lost to Capa and others but Alekhine preferred to play him and Bogo.

Things did work fine for some thirty years between 1950s and 1980s, mainly because there existed a Soviet Union that spent lots of resources on the World Championship. As soon as it fell apart so did the World Championship. In the 1990s there were the knockout World Championships combined with Kasparov at the same time having his own private title where even fewer rules applied. Only two players were picked for Candidates, followed by the loser being given the title match, and the next cycle being without the best players.

As the situation is today I still value the best chess player more than the World Champion. Sometimes they are the same person, but to me one single and short event followed by years of declaring that whoever won it just never tries to do his best in any other event gets boring in the long run. When Spassky won the title he had played 98 qualification games just to reach the long title match and won several comparatively long matches against the strongest opponents in the world. Then the title meant much more than it does today.

no

The great thing about chess is that we have both a rating list and world championship matches. Those who value only ratings can ignore the title matches, and those who value the title can look forward to the match.

To some, a 4 digit statistical measure has the most meaning. To me, a match between the champion and the challenger is a direct contest for the title, and this is what gives meaning to the world championship.

Everything else about the candidates process are details that can be fixed. And currently, I think there's not much wrong with the process. The grand prix series is one of the best qualification processes to come out of FIDE for a long time.

I'm just pointing out that the World Championship only had to to with raising money up until at least 1948, and that is why I don't value the institution as much as some others do. I would value it more if it had been a fair competition, which it wasn't. The eleven years between 1896 and 1907 Lasker didn't play anyone simply because he didn't have to and didn't want to. When Capablanca wanted to play him before World War I Lasker decided that he only would put his title at stake if Capa accepted that Lasker would keep the title even if he lost the match with 0-1 or 1-2 in wins. Not particularly fair, but accepted as legitimate simply because people had too much respect for the title.

I don't think many see a 4 digit statistical measure as the most meaningful thing in chess. I'm mainly interested in good chess and who plays most of it. Of the latest three-four Candidates events I think the only one that was meaningful was the latest one. The minimatch knockout Gelfand won and the invitation only event Leko won with Kasparov and Anand missing simply had little meaning. The latest cycle was OK, but I wouldn't bet things will improve in the future considering that FIDE have been changing the rules frequently both between and during cycles.

Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting, but this sounds like a way to declare Carlsen the best player even if he loses the title match. Are you aware that Anand has had to defend his title more often than anyone in recent history? That's 2008, 2010, 2012, and now 2013. Of course he has been forced to focus more on his matches, and less on tournaments. If he does win, the next match is already scheduled for 2014!

But like I said, every one is entitled to value or not value the world title.

Forgive me if I am misinterpreting, but if you declare that who is the best player in the world was decided by who won a rapid game between Anand and Gelfand in 2012 I disagree. If you mean that said game decided who was World Champion it's another matter. I don't see the two things as synonyms.

You have definitely misinterpreted.

Never have I ever said that the title is 'all-knowing' in its ability to perfectly determine the 'best' player in the world. If you actually read what I said, the direct competition between the world champion and the challenger is what gives value to the title. The alternative proposed in the article, a tennis style title based on 4 grand slams a year, produces a less valuable title.

In that I certainly agree. The title would have little value if there was no direct competition between Champion and one (2013) or many (2007) challengers. To me tournament World Championships like those held in 1948 and 2007 are fine, as are matches. But I don't think the World Championship ever will be the same World Championship as the one Spassky, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov won. We are stuck with short matches often decided in rapid instead of the thorough format of those days.

One of the weakest article length written material in chess that I have ever seen. No real arguments, no defense, no articulation, filled with completely irrelevant trivia. The chess world will just ignore the ignorant rant and go on with the wonderful excitement building up around the upcoming match.