 Spraggett raised his game to meet the challenge of the powerful Soviet defector Igor V. Ivanov, who had settled in Montreal in the early 1980s.Those years saw Spraggett attain success in several strong tournaments, with victories in the 1983 World Open, 1984 Commonwealth Championship, 1984 New York Open, and 1985 Commonwealth Championship.He did not play an international-standard grandmaster round-robin tournament until Wijk aan Zee early in 1985, just after his thirtieth birthday, at which time he was the highest-rated IM in the world.