WCC Cycle Changed AGAIN!!!!!

Back in March, FIDE said the world championship cycle would not change until 2015 (yeah, right). Well, it barely lasted three months. TWO huge wrinkles are being introduced.

First...

According to the regulations if GM Kramnik wins the WCC tournament in Mexico City 2007, a match between GM Kramnik and GM Topalov, the current and the previous world champions, will take place in 2008. In that case, the winner of the Kramnik-Topalov match will play against the winner of the 2007 World Cup.

The best explanation of the situation is provided by Mig Greengard...

If Kramnik wins Mexico, Topalov gets a direct world championship rematch in 2008. The winner is world champion and plays the winner of the 2007 World Cup (WCh challenger) the 2009.

If Kramnik doesn't win Mexico, a new match is created from thin air, demoting the World Cup winner from WCh challenger to semifinalist. The semi-final matches would then be Topalov against the winner of the 2007 World Cup and Kramnik against the winner of Mexico. The winners of these two matches would then play for the world championship.

When [FIDE] couldn't come up with a way to put Topalov into the cycle, they put him on top of it giving him the exact same post-Mexico rights as Kramnik. If Kramnik wins Mexico, they are both finalists. If Kramnik doesn't win, they are both semifinalists.

Second... (and of more lasting importance)

The challenger each cycle will no longer be the winner of the World Cup; the challenger will be determined by a match between the winner of the World Cup and the winner of a set of Grand Prix tournaments. This picture from ChessBase attempts to explain it.