Talk:Boris Spassky

I've moved this back here from Boris V. Spassky because his middle initial (or middle name in full) is almost never used. List it in the article, for sure, but the convention is to give the article title its most common form. --Camembert

In a recent book (Bobby Fischer goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time by David Edmonds and John Eidinow; Ecco, 2004) on the 1972 match, the authors discuss the report that Spassky had a Jewish mother (his paternal grandfather was an Orthodox priest) - when the authors asked Spassky about this, he denied it, saying he had no idea how this idea might have arisen. In the absence of any evidence I think we should accept this. Also according to Jewish religious law there is no such thing as being half-Jewish. I don't speak German, but the German link on this page seems to imply that he was Jewish. PatGallacher 00:11, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

I'm not sure why two of my changes were removed. Neither appears to be related to the Jack O'Lantern unsourced changes. Spassky's GM title at age 18 was in fact a record at the time, as documented elsewhere in Wikipedia. Furthermore, I believe that the change of "success" to "career" is valid as losing the 1972 match by 4 points and the 1974 match by 3 points can hardly be defined as successes. - albertod4

I removed the latter dilemma by removing sentence altogether. His pinnacle was clearly around 1969, while he was still a force until 1977. Rocksong 02:53, 29 May 2006 (UTC)