Story here at chess24 via Dennis Monokroussos. Also a ChessBase perspective.
Essentially, Carlsen is being railroaded. It’s difficult to say, “Hey let’s work within FIDE to better chess!” when FIDE is treating its flagship product (World Champion Title) so poorly.
One can’t help but notice the FIDE flag of the player most likely to replace Carlsen in the WC match, should Carlsen decline to sign for the match by Ilyumzhinov’s deadline.
Hhhmm…ah…well…perhaps the Olympiad happenings have strained a few relationships between the Champ’s country and Karjakin’s country.
In fairness to Karjakin, he was clear second in the candidates’ tournament behind Anand. And half the field plays under the same flag.
Who will take the World Championship match seriously if Carlsen is not involved? If Anand had any guts, he would not sign the contract either.
Indeed. Karpov had to prove himself widely after being granted the WC title. But a different world, different time.
FIDE has already messed around with the WC title so much. I mean, c’mon, the “world champions” of the early 2000s didn’t exactly dominate the chess world. Khalifman, Ponomariov, Kasimdzhanov, Topalov…none of them (then or now) can be called the clear and undisputed best player in the world.
Same FIDE idiocy, different decade.
I agree. However, it is fair to ask if FIDE would be so insistent had, say, Aronian or Topalov finished second in the Candidates Tournament.
Didn’t Magnus Carlson just win the World Championship last autumn?
How come they’re playing another title match so soon?
Unless Carlsen (or Anand) has a real reason to request a postponement, as opposed to “I don’t wanna play there then,” FIDE should enforce its schedule, announced well in advance. There might be more to it; these guys don’t keep me in the loop.
The shame is that no better site and prize fund developed over the past year. The world championship is in its best shape in a long time, IMHO, but I am not sure if annual WC matches and Candidates is a sustainable model. There just ain’t enough $$$ to go around—not even with a young Western world champ who is not averse to media and publicity, in a shy Nordic way. Maybe a two-year cycle is better.
OTOH, I do not want to see an alleged WC match without Carlsen, unless he just spits on the contract and gives FIDE the finger—or the shy Nordic equivalent. Will be interesting to see how this goes…
Completely fair question!
This “Do it my way or I won’t play” approach was tiresome when Fischer did it, was tiresome when Kasparov did it, was tiresome when others did it, and is tiresome now. Yes, FIDE is far from perfect, but part of being a champion is defending under prescribed terms.
The FIDE of the 1970s was far more reliable. Today’s FIDE has no compunction about changing rules and conditions on the fly in mid-cycle.
Yes, of course. Carlsen is the bad guy for asking where the match will actually be played and asking the name of the “company” providing only 50% of the prize fund. But hey, he should just sign on the dotted line and trust ol’ Uncle Kirsan to work out the details, right?
It’s reasonable to get this information in advance. It’s not reasonable to insist to continue to hold the crown if the answers are unwanted but not ridiculous.
“…but not ridiculous.” OK.
That seems like information that might strike an EU citizen as ridiculous. FIDE owes Carlsen real answers. Without those, Kirsan is simply railroading the current champion to serve his own purposes.
This is starting to look like more Russian pressure to steal the championship and put it back in the hands of a Soviet style managerial elite. The run of “Russians” holding onto the championship from 1948 to 1972 was pleasing to the old regime. The Kasparov reign was unsettling to the Putin wing, but he was grudgingly accepted under the dark control of the Soviets who morphed into oil capitalists. The layman still looked on him as another “Russian.” The loss of the title to Fischer, Anand, and now to Carlsen is as much as humiliation to the Russians as the US not winning at basketball. You saw the US response to that by creating the “Dream Team.” The Russians want the title back in their hands and do not care how they get it. Is Kirsan a puppet in all of this? Looks like it.
FIDE needs to recognize they’re just the caretaker of the World Championship, not the owner.
Unless he’s defeated in match play, Carlsen holds the crown, period. FIDE can install some rump champion whom few will recognize. If FIDE stripped Carlsen of the title, he could very easily obtain financing and start playing his own version of World Championship matches with other top players, much as Kasparov did years ago. If he played two or three such matches, the FIDE title would be just empty paper. They’d come begging for a “reunification match”.
For all FIDE’s faults, it is imperative that an organization exists to independently sanction a World Championship. Individual ownership is much more unpalatable.
I agree with you in theory. But the organization has to foster well structured matches between the top contenders and a worthy Champion. Otherwise, it’s no better than a champion who ducks top contenders or won’t defend the title in a timely manner, and is just asking to be replaced by a more effective organization. If Carlsen were stripped of the title for requesting a reasonable postponement, I’m sure such an organization would materialize.
If, under the auspices of such a new organization, Carlsen played matches against two or three of his associates in the Sinquefield Cup and won them all, who would really care about the FIDE alternative? Maybe they could work something out with Stan Vaughn and the WCF 
During Kasparov’s Wanderjahre, FIDE refused to take the world championship seriously until San Luis. (And once they had a World Championship title earned in a credible event, the unification match came.) For all Kasparov’s missteps (especially his ducking Shirov for financial reasons), the title did not suffer appreciably under individual ownership relative to FIDE’s handling.
It would be far better for a credible FIDE to continue to award and administer the title. For that, we would first need a credible FIDE.
The whole Shirov affair left a bad taste in my mouth as well, but I wouldn’t say that Kasparov “ducked” him. Look at Shirov’s and Kramnik’s respective lifetime scores against Kasparov. He was risking a lot more by playing Kramnik than he would have by playing Shirov.