Shipov Sergey. FIDE World Chess Championship. San Luis - 2005 (booklet)

Выходные данные не указаны. — 2005. — 214 p.My congratulations to all chess fans with a new grandiose event! The tournament in Argentina will determine the most legitimate World Champion for the last several years.There are many excellent GMs who could have joined the battle for the title. I would suggest the following eight: Kasparov, Kramnik, Shirov, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, Gelfand, Bacrot and Akopian. I don’t think that this squad is really inferior to that in San Luis. However it is impossible to embrace the boundless. Suppose these two “teams” put together play two big rounds. Apart from participants’ fatigue there will be another problem – other discontented GMs, such as Grischuk, Radjabov, Kamsky, Lautier, Van Wely, etc. It is a real vicious circle.Personally, I support FIDE decision to resolve the crisis in a good old tried-and-true way. Let’s recall the match-tournament Hague-Moscow (1948) organized after Alekhine demise. Only five GM took part in the event, whereas several strong players such as Fine, Najdorf, Boleslavsky, Bronstein, were left overboard. Despite this drawback nobody questioned the legitimacy of Botvinnik’s title. Mikhail Moiseevich convincingly proved that he was not an accidental newcomer on chess Olympus but a great champion.Two out of second eight that I mentioned, Kasparov and Kramnik simply refused to fight for the title; others did not score enough two-year aggregative rating. One way or another, the number of participants had to be limited. It is hardly possible to figure out any criteria which is better than rating in this situation...