Not sure I get your entire meaning here, but let's say there are three possible scenarios for "friends of Fischer" involvement and their subsequent statements. let me address the plausibility of each one, hoping that I describe the one you have in mind.

==-==-==
1. Fischer worked on the book over several years, but told no one, even though he was known for direct, blunt statements of his opinions and desires. He doesn't tell his wife, with whom he has suffered through some of the most shameful, degrading experiences a once-proud man could suffer, and who was also a chess book author; not Sverrison, whose wife was Fischer's nurse, and whose son he played chess with, and who lived in the same building; not Helgi Olafsson, who idolized Fischer and with whom he discussed modern chess events; and not Fredrik Olafsson, a peer, a counselor, a defender and fellow warrior against UBS. When Fischer died, he absolutely took these secrets with him to the grave, except for Ed Trice. Nevertheless, all the Icelandic and Japanese and other contingents can honestly proclaim that he was not working on the book.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I judge this scenario's likelihood as .01.

==-==-==
2. Those who knew Fischer intimately knew he was up to something, keeping notes, occasionally discussing the Batsford version of M60MG, talking about publishing an expose of the cheating Russians andother publishing ideas, and bad mouthing analyst pretenders who had reviewed his early games. One or two friends got involved with assembling his notes for him, and (although his wife is a chess author) it was they who tried to find an outsider willing to set up the publication process. These figures were on board with the copyright ownership test, and so were respectful of (or intimidated by) Fischer's fierce desire to keep his notes project secret. They aided the deception through silence or misdirection. The book goes to print, and the shadowy charade of a project continues. But then Fischer dies.

At this point--today--with no legal challenges forthcoming, and with cries of fraud, even from still-ignorant members of the RJF committee, these "friends" continue to maintain (with gritted teeth) their silence and/or open support for the fraud theory.

I rate the likelihood of this scenario as .25 out of 10.

==-==-==
3. Fischer was not an idle man at all, and during his wanderings and bookstore visits, he continued to analyze games, analyze analysts efforts, and review new versions of his own M60MG. He let it be known that he wasn't interested in traditional chess anymore, or updating his classic himself--and yet he took a few close friends into confidence, and through a sometimes turbulent year or two of work, smoothed out a new draft of his M60MG, for all the reasons given in the preface to M61MG, even though his collaborators knew he was deluded concerning the money squeeze. They agreed that some token new game (1972 Rd 1) would be sufficient to stand trial for a new work if push came to shove, and didn't insist that something better, more pivotal, or juicier be the extra game. They just went along, all the way. He ordered denial of what they were doing, and they went along, whenever asked. His orders were so strongly felt, that the collaborators to this day, even after his death, still agree to continue denial.

Which is to say, they knowingly deny what happened, and why.

I rate the likelihood of this scenario as .5.
==-==-==

Just as a contrast: Other scenarios that fit the facts as I know them have likelihoods of 2, 4, and even 6 out of 10.

But from here the scenarios leave Fischer out, as the principal behind the publication process.

This would be a good summary if it weren't for some BIG problems in the storyline for this "fraud." Its a simple answer, though, for people who don't want to bother with the murky details. HOWEVER I don't think the viewpoint carries enough critically acceptable evidence to warrant a personal slam against IMlday. Shows a bigger deficit in your personality than in his beliefs, I'm thinking.

<Stonehenge>, Challenge #1: try analyzing even 1 Fischer game, with 10 pages of valid variations, using a computer if you want, inserting fresh comments that make sense to (and enlighten) expert and above chess players. And be sure to throw a couple new position diagrams in along the way. Insert some deep-history comments that fit the times the game was played during. What are the odds you are going to fool any given chess writer with your comments?

Keep track of how long that took you. Multiply by 60. What kind of minimum timeline we looking at?

Challenge #2: Explain convincingly to me how a con-man would have the nerve to announce the publication of a book that *HE KNEW* Fischer would denounce while he was alive, *AND YET* be afraid to put it on the open market even now with Fischer gone.

Challenge #3: Explain how and why a con-man intentionally leaves visible and reportable tracks--including his own public, exaggerated foreshadowing of what was coming--when later exposure will make him the center of ridicule in the Fischer legacy? And when--like Fischer--he has his own game version he is desperately trying to promote rather than "traditional chess"?

Challenge #4: Explain why anyone, con-man or not--would want the world to think that someone else was responsible for their tremendous achievement of "improving a classic"--even if it was as delusional as Fischer's belief that UBS had turned him into a pauper (if he in fact did believe that)?

Dude, there are about ten more challenges when you finish with these. Do a good job and as far as I'm concerned, you can call both IMlday *and me* naive fools.

(yeah, I know, you're going to call me one even without the qualifying rounds.)

They fool me to the top of my bent. -

http://poll.pollcode.com/jyhU

Anyone can enter their vote with a couple of clicks with no registration at all. You can't vote twice with the same IP address, but so what? Just walk around town with a laptop or wi-fi enabled blackberry or iPhone, and enter your vote on every wireless hotspot you walk by. I could enter at least 50 votes a day easily.

Yes, that is extremely curious...the simple answer definitely is that someone with a lot at stake is voting repeatedly.

None of these voters seem to have turned up anywhere else, with stricter participation requirements, have they? And the blogger "Alan Quatermain" on M61MG has disappeared, the link dead. He was recording evidence of the book's sales and impact.

<Riverbeast> Miyoko Watai has not made any type of statement, has she? I don't know of one. What do you think of that?

That's because Miyoko Watai does not respond to emails, period.

Like Ed Labate, I took the liberty of contacting Fischer's Icelandic friends to ask if they would go public with Fischer's response to this book when he heard about it.

I wrote Gudmundur Thorarinsson (and through him, I corresponded with GM Helgi Olafsson) and asked them if they would post an open letter testifying to Fischer's denial of authorship of 61MG.

Thorarinsson said Fischer told him the writers of the book were "thieves and criminals"

Olafsson wrote that Fischer did not mention the book to him, but he mentioned Ed Trice as the culprit, and he mentioned the Fischer photograph that Einar Einarsson loaned Trice, which ended up on the cover.

I asked if they could contact Miyoko Watai and ask her to come forward, and I was told that she simply does not return any calls or emails regarding Bobby Fischer.

I would think Einarsson's email (posted on Labate's website) should effectively end this discussion...

Q: Why did the goldfish swim with the sharks?

I'm going to meditate on that one for a while.... :-)

E Trice vs Deep Thought, 1989

Look at the players it beat in 1988:

There is no Ong.