Fresh from his Linares victory, Peter Leko gave a brief interview to the Indian website Chathurangam. Vijay Kumar made the slip of calling Leko's match against Kramnik, "a candidates match," in direct violation of the law that says everyone must pretend everything is a world championship these days. I expect Vijay has been hunted down and given a brutal wedgie by Leko/Kramnik representative Carsten Hensel by now.
I've gone to completely in the other direction and feel we are back in 1998-1999, and 1886 for that matter. Kramnik was supposed to defend his title after two years and instead stopped playing almost completely in 2002. The FIDE KO title last won by Ponomariov just isn't worthy of more than a year's duration. (Ask him now what's harder to win, Wijk aan Zee, Linares, or the KO!)
Now that the reunification train is rolling, we can all pretend that yes, Vladimir and yes, Ruslan, you are BOTH world champions. And if you both get to the board like good boys this summer we'll all go out for ice cream later. Oy. Before you go to sleep tonight, say a quick prayer to Caissa that we can navigate the obstacle course of egos and financial disasters and make this work.
