B. Spassky must be enjoying his old age,like Karpov he is an ambassador of these sport.Enjoying invites from big tournaments organizers and enjoying travelling.

He must have earned millions in chess.>

In this post from the first page of the <Benzol> forum some light is shed on what Bob Wade did to help Fischer in his matches in 1971, 1972, 1975 and 1992.

<I was very fortunate to meet Robert Wade this morning as he was passing through Auckland on his way to the Queenstown Classic. Although he is physically frail (84 years old and has to use a walking stick) he still mentally very alert.

<Caissanist> asked about Fischer and Bob said that he provided game files on all the opponents Fischer faced in matches he played in 1971 and 1972.

He also did the same job in 1975 for the aborted Ficher-Karpov Match and again in 1992 for the second Spassky Match.

His only other activity with GM's was with local British players (Nigel Short was not one of them, however).

<ughaibu> asked about the Benjamin brothers and it appears that after the 1970's they completely dropped out of chess.

He seems a very warm and generous man and will be seeing his sister in Dunedin for the first time in sixty years.

I wish him all the best in Queenstown.>

I can also tell you that Fischer was somewhat annoyed with Bob Wade and Kevin O'Connell over "The Games Of Robert J Fischer". Bob thought the because of the size of the work the book wouldn't appear until well after the 1972 match was over. When the book came out earlier Fischer was angry because the Soviet think tank had immediate access to all his pet lines and could analyse all his games in detail to reveal weaknesses in his play.

<I think it's odd that Fischer thought that it was OK for him to have access to Spassky's games but didn't like the idea of Spassky having access to any of his.>

Spassky's 100 Games - Cafferty
Spassky's Best Games - Soltis
51 Games of Boris Spassky - Soltis
Spassky's Road to the Summit - Cozens
Spassky Master of the Initiative -Raetsky/Chetverik
Grand Strategy - 60 Games of Spassky - Reek
Spassky 300 Games - Chess Stars
Spassky - Weltgeschichte des Schachs
Boris Spassky World's Greatest Chess Player - Schroeder

The ultimate example of how badly they underestimated him is that as late as 1970, at age 59, Botvinnik still believed he could beat Fischer in a match himself. Their match fell apart because Fischer walked out, not because Botvinnik had the sense to. Fischer was afraid he couldn't get the best of Botvinnik in a mere 18 games and demanded at the last minute that they change it to first to win 6 games. Good thing for Botvinnik's sake that he did, because he spared him a terrible end-of-career beating.

An interesting observation. Continuously active competitive chessplayers keep on getting stronger until at some point in their careers, they hit a plateau, and then sometime in middle age begin sliding down; with intermittent valleys and peaks interspersed all throughout. Within a population of interacting players, this is reflected in their ratings. For most chessplayers before the computer age, the chess plateau seemed to occur at around the ages of 26 to 40. There are notable exceptions. Morphy, Lasker, Pillsbury, Reshevsky, Fine, Keres, Tal, Karpov, Kasparov, and Kramnik seemed to have been playing near their plateau right out of their teens or in their early 20s; but in general this trend can be seen for such luminaries as Anderssen, Steinitz, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov, Petrosian, Spassky, Korchnoi, Fischer, and Anand. At the other end, Anderssen, Steinitz, Lasker, Botvinnik, and Karpov were still close to their high plateau even at 50.

ALL players now have a deeper repertoire, so it is unclear if the advent of chess software benefits one group more than the other.

Good point. Instead of going through dozens of printed chess magazines, openings books, and tournament books, the masters of the 1990s (including Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Shirov, Kamsky and so on) just have to press a few buttons on the keyboard. Computers make research easier for every one.

Had good computer chess software existed in 1980s, then there could have been a glut of of teen GMs right in 1990, beginning with the above players. They probably would have reached their plateau earlier. Or maybe not, as there are other hypotheses given below.

<The appearance of several teen GMs might be due to ratings 'devaluation.' When Bobby Fischer was a teenager, there were approximately 200 GMs in the world. Now, I guess, there are several thousand. This makes the GM title a bit watered down.>

Indeed, there seems to be a popular feeling that the term Grandmaster had a higher value before the 1990s. Has any mathematician made a thesis on <ratings devaluation>?

Thus in the above discussion, the appearance of numerous teen GMs in the 2000s may be due to

1. Computer chess softwares.
2. Ratings devaluation.
3. The existence of numerous GMs today makes it easier for non GMs to make the norms.

Other hypotheses:

4. I think there was a time when FIDE required only 2 norms; or in brief made it easier to become a GM, resulting in a sudden increase of GMs, which in turn would lead to #3 above.

5. The dissolution of the Soviet Union allowed numerous local players there, who were already playing chess at GM levels but could not make the norms because the tournaments they played in were mostly unrated or were all limited to Soviet Union citizens, to play in international tournaments in Western Europe which were rated and which had the required participants from multiple countries to create GM norms.

I guess its irrelevant, given that, after following a few strong tournaments each year, you realize who the real killers are.

Quite right. For any given population of interacting active chessplayers, every one gets to quickly know who the real killers are.

<HeMateMe: Because livestock are fed with feed that contains steroids, some of this is thought to be going into the reproduction cycle, we are 'growing' bigger, larger kids. Could they mean a larger, more efficiant brain?>

Unfortunately not. Our genes program the number of neurons we have at birth, and neurons do not divide to form more neurons after they have differentiated. They can die though; but fortunately there is usually enough to keep our brains functional for a lifetime.

The upright stance of humans also result in narrower pelvises. Larger pelvises would result in women who could not walk upright. For more than a hundred thousand years, any baby born with too large a head, resulting in a cephalo-pelvic disproportion, died. Often along with its mother. "Died at childbirth" was quite common before modern Medicine, and this was one of the reasons. I would guess that this was one of the evolutionary constraints regarding growing a larger brain.