What is the Best Way to Determine the World Champion in Chess?

All throughout history the World Chess Championship and the title of the World Chess Champion has been a mess. The title of World Chess Champion is supposed to be held by the best classical chess player in the world, and sadly, this has often not been the case. Currently the World Chess Champion, Ding Liren is clearly not the best player in the World (obviously Magnus Carlsen is), and might not be the second best (currently rated 4th best and he came in second in the Candidate Tournament). And to make it worse, he won the title in a rapid game tie-breaker, not a classical game of chess. Ugh, to me that is like deciding the World Cup in soccer by penalty kicks and is completely unsatisfying. None of this is his fault obviously and in no way am I taking a shot at him – he earned the title fair and square.

Carlsen decided not to defend his title partly (I know there were other reasons too but they are not as relevant to the topic) because he didn’t like the format – he thought that 12 or 14 was too few games of classical chess to determine the best player. He suggested in an interview for more games with a little less time per game. That seems reasonable but that still doesn’t necessarily make it the best way to determine the world champion at any given time. Why does there have to be a match just because that’s the way it has almost always been done? After all, sometimes a difference in styles can determine the winner in an otherwise very close match up.

I don’t pretend to know the answer as to what is the fairest or the best format and I do think that the top 100 players in the world should probably determine the championship structure. But, I do know that if they continue with the current format with matches you will have less of a chance of having the best player in the world being the current world champion. Any time the best player in the world doesn’t like the FIDE’s format, politics, rules, or corruption they might not participate and now the title seems hollow and unsatisfying (Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, and Carlsen). In the past it was even worse where people sat on their titles because of a lack of funding, being scared, or were given a ridiculous automatic rematch (Emanuel Lasker, Alexander Alekhine, and Mikhail Botvinnik).

You can make an argument that having a yearly round robin tournament, basically the current Candidate’s Tournament, is the best way to determine the World Champion. Now, I get that the winner every year won’t always be the best player in the world. I highly doubt that Carlsen would have won the tournament 13 or 14 times in a row and Kasparov or Fischer (if he was mentally stable, didn’t retire, and he had played every year since 1962) would not have won 15-20 times in a row. But, they would have won most of the time. Of course, in the years that they didn’t win and they clearly had the highest rating that would be unsatisfying too. So there is no clear best way to determine the Chess World Champion and it will probably be a mess in the foreseeable future. But, we should keep trying nonetheless.

What do you think is the best format to determine the Word Chess Champion?