Talk:World Chess Championship

World Chess Champion and world chess champion currently point to different articles which should probably be merged. -- BenRG 09:43, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I've shuffled things around a bit - it's better now, I think. --Camembert

I agree, its much better, and the reader gets a better feeling for the reality of how the idea of World Chess Champion evolved. I question one thing...the use of the word "official". It suggests a governing body. I would argue that the first official chess champion was Botvinnik, and that before FIDE all champions were simply consensus champions. I feel that the first player to definately gain concensus was Paul Morphy, and that after his retirement no concensus was reached until the 1886 match Steinitz won.

Now, all this said, I admit that the article does explain its use of the word "official" and I don't have a concrete suggestion at this time for any changes.-- ChessPlayer

I think the material on the other championships (Women's, Seniors, etc) should be moved to their own pages, and I volunteer to move them soon. ChessPlayer 21:26, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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The opening paragraph had the following:

Some still consider Garry Kasparov to be the world champion, despite having lost to Kramnik, as he remains the highest-ranked player on the ELO list.

I have removed this. I do not think that anybody (apart from the misinformed) believes Kasparov to still be champion. As I've said in my edit (and as should in any case be clear from the article) being number one on the rating list and being world champion are different things. Kasparov has not played in the FIDE championships since the 1993 PCA breakaway, and he lost the title which that breakaway created to Kramnik in their 2000 match, hence he holds no championship title. I certainly don't think Kasparov would claim to be champion himself, and there's no reason for other people to make that claim either. I've taken this out once before, but it was put back in. If somebody wants to put it in again, I'd like to know exactly who believes Kasparov is still champion and why they believe it.

Bobby Fischer, who hasn't played a competitive game of chess since 1992, is the still, theoretically, 'undefeated world champion'.

I have also removed this. Originally, I had edited it to read "is self-styled 'undefeated world champion'", but on reflection, I don't see why Fischer is deserving of such prominent mention in the first paragraph like this. The opening paragraph should give the reader a very quick intro to the subject, which here, I think, means saying what the championship is and who currently holds it. The fact is that virtually nobody (apart perhaps from Fischer himself) considers Fischer to be world champion--hardly surprising given that he's played just 30 games in over 30 years, and those against a player hardly at the top of world chess (Spassky in '92 was far from his peak)--so I don't believe he needs to be mentioned in the opening paragraph (of course, it's fine to explain it all in detail in the body of the article itself). I mean, one could also argue that Alekhine, who won the title back from Euwe in 1937 and then never lost it, is "undefeated world champion", but as he died in 1946, I think such a claim would be a bit silly :)

I've also made a few other changes which I hope don't need explanation (the manner of Alekhine's death and 2004 being FIDE Year of Tigran Petrosian aren't really pertinent to the subject of the world chess championship), but if they do, I'll be happy to provide. --Camembert

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ChessPlayer asked in an edit summary: "is Qadhafi the sponsor, or the nation of Libya?" I'm not sure there's a great deal of difference between the two in practice, but according to the FIDE website [1] it is Qaddafi himself. It says "FIDE has a pleasure to announce the dates and venue of the World Chess Championship 2004 - Tripoli, the capital of Libya, from June 18 till July 13, 2004 under the patronage of the Leader of the Libyan Jamahirya, H.E. Moammar Al Gathafi, who also provides the prize fund for the Championship." --Camembert 00:51, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Yeah, agree with you about Alekhine's death/year of Petrosian being irrelevant, and that the Fischer/Spassky rematch should perhaps only be mentioned within the actual body of it rather than in the introduction. I've been trying to fill the gap from 1948 to 75, covering Botivinnik's reign and then the "Game of the Century" - which is where I've stopped short so far... The Karpov/Kasparov epic certainly needs to be mentioned too. - Mack