The Chess Mind

In this recent post I presented the highlights of FIDE's new plans for conducting the world championship cycles. Overall, the plan looks pretty good, except for a few oddities about the first cycle or so, and the Association of Chess Professionals has picked up on this as well. Their response is largely positive, and you can read their constructive suggestions here.

...can be found here. Here's a summary:

The championships in Mexico will continue as planned this year, with Kramnik's participation. If he wins, he plays Topalov again in 2008(!!); if he loses, he gets to play the winner of the Mexico event that year.

There will also be a World Cup event this year, and the winner will play a match in 2009 with the survivor of the 2008 Kramnik-Topalov/Mexico match.

After that, things are normalized: the winner of the 2009 World Cup plays the champ in 2010; the winner of the 2011 World Cup plays the champ in 2012; the winner of the 2013 World Cup plays the champ in 2014, etc.

Not bad in theory; we'll see how it works in practice. Anyone want to predict the winners? And how funny is it that Topalov has to root for a Kramnik victory in Mexico this year?