He is not praised for his own skill, but rather lives in the shadow of Fischer and the 72' match.>

I never claimed that he's not impressive.

I claimed that he's overshadowed by Fischer.

It says a lot about Boris that in 2010 he was scheduled to join English GM Conquest for a live webcam coverage of Gibraltar. It was supposed to be for 15 minutes. Spassky spent the entire playing session with Conquest. Just about every suggestion Spassky made on the GM games was bang on the money. Also says a lot about Spassky that he had to get a glass of mineral water from the bar. 10 minutes later he came back with a pint of beer. Conquest: "I thought you were getting water, Boris." Spassky: "I improved my position!"

I've been meaning to tell a Spassky story. I heard this last year from an old friend of mine, Brian, who I knew back in the junior days here in Ontario, Canada.

Brian's chess trainer was a strong player of Russian origin (can't remember his name). In 1994 (at which point Brian was 23, 24 years old) the trainer accompanied Brian, a "weak master", to a tournament somewhere in the States (can't remember which city). One of the selling points of this tournament was that Spassky would be there, not actually playing, but doing some sort of commentary or something (can't remember the exact details).

Anyhow, after two or three rounds Brian was the lowest rated player in the "master" section with 0 points and was given a forced bye. Brian turned out to be a very lucky loser indeed. His trainer said "I'm having lunch with Boris Spassky ... do you wanna come?" Brian was blown away and he naturally said yes.

During lunch Spassky talked about, among other things, studying some complex pawn ending that his trainer gave him in preparation for the '72 World Championship. He took out the board and showed the position to Brian and his trainer. Spassky said he solved it in eight minutes.

The trainer also asked Spassky about an incident where some Russian GMs (maybe one of them was Igor Ivanov?) had been analyzing and Spassky came along and made some suggestions and these players rudely brushed him off with "nah, that's the way Russians were playing 30 years ago", or some similar comment, upon which Spassky simply walked away. The trainer asked Spassky why he put up with such disrespect and Spassky said "I've been to the summit, I have nothing more to prove."

During lunch Spassky occasionally had to pause to speak to Brian's trainer in Russian in order to ask the trainer how to say something in English - each and every time he would apologize to Brian for having to do this.

Later that day, back at this hotel room, Brian met up with two other friends from his junior days in Toronto (one was a guy named Adam and the other was the late Todd Southam, former Canadian Junior Champion and two-time Toronto Closed Champion) who had come to the tournament with him. When Brian enthused "guess who I had lunch with ... Boris Spassky!!!", they wouldn't believe him. He showed them the pawn ending that Spassky had demonstrated. Todd also solved the ending - though it took him about an hour. Still Todd and Adam weren't sure whether to believe Brian - they didn't want to be taken in. "Why would I lie?", Brian kept telling them.

The next day the round was about to commence and Brian had taken his seat at his board when Spassky walked into the playing hall. As Brian told me "as Spassky walked through the playing hall everyone watch him because ... he's Boris Spassky." With all eyes on him, including those of the doubting Todd and Adam, Spassky went right up to Brian, extended his hand in a hand shake, and said "good luck in your game today!"

Just look at their 92' match.

Spassky played awful chess in comparison to the Brilliant Fischer.

The fame of Spassky is in large part thanks to Fischer.

As far as having his butt handed him by Fischer, a lot of great players have lost matches, and lost them badly. Kasparov "had his butt handed him" by Kramnik, but everyone still believes he was a great player.

He was way past his prime by the time he played Kramnik.

From 2002-2012 Kasparov has been on a huge decline.

I brought up the 92' match because Fischer was also in his 60's, and yet he was still the superior player.

Maybe saying he had his butt handed to him is a bit too much.

Fischer never could manage to win a game against him until the 72' match.

From 2002-2012 Kasparov has been on a huge decline.>

Yep, Kasparov reached his peak rating in the very middle of '99, and only lost a few points come the January '00 ELO list.

Oh, and then he went 10 straight supertournament victories in a row ending with Linares 2002.

Most of the losses are from 2100-2200+ rated players.

I do not think you have a clear picture of Kasparov during these years. A quick link to Wikipedia or somesuch site may be helpful. Here's another one.

<http://www.kasparovagent.com/garry_...>

Notice, since 2006, his main focus has been politics. If you have any understanding of Russian politics, you can imagine that this may take up some time.

It is great to have certain players as your favorite, but it is quite hard to diminish Kasparov's achievements using logic. He played the best players he could, played every major super-tournament he could, even chose the personally very toughest opponent in '00.

We all have our favorites. I really like what Bronstein did for chess. Seirawan and Suba have special places as well. These guys are no where on the very best of the best lists. It's okay. It really doesn't matter.

That is a fact.>

<Conrad93: False, Jim. I said "2002-2012.">

Seirawan does not belong next to Bronstein. Besides creating his own version of chess and writing some great chess books, he hasn't revolutionized chess like Bronstein.