Bent Larsen (chess player)

Bent Larsen, 1977
Surname	Jørgen Bent Larsen
Association	Denmark
Born	March 4, 1935 Tilsted Parish , Thisted Commune , Denmark
Died	September 9, 2010 Buenos Aires
title	International Master (1955) Grand Master (1956)
Best Elo rating	2660 (July 1971)

Jørgen Bent Larsen (born March 4, 1935 in the parish of Tilsted , Thisted Kommune , † September 9, 2010 in Buenos Aires ) was a Danish chess grandmaster .

Life

Bent Larsen was Danish champion in 1954, 1955, 1956, 1959, 1963 and 1964 . In 1955 he became International Master , he won the title of Grand Master in 1956 with an excellent result at the Chess Olympiad in Moscow , scoring 14 out of 18 possible points on the first board of the Danish team. Between 1954 and 1970 he played six times at the Chess Olympiads for Denmark and won a gold medal ( 1956 in Moscow) and twice a third place in the individual ranking of the first board.

Between 1964 and 1971 he was next to Bobby Fischer as the best player outside of the Soviet Union . During this time he won the interzonal tournaments in Amsterdam in 1964 (shared with Vasily Smyslow , Boris Spasski and Michail Tal ) and in Sousse in 1967 and tournaments in Havana in 1967, Winnipeg in 1967, Palma in 1967 and Monaco in 1968. In his first candidates' tournament in 1965, he made the quarter-finals Borislav Ivkov with 5.5: 2.5, but lost in the semifinals against Tal with 4.5: 5.5. In the 1968 Candidates' tournament he first defeated Lajos Portisch with 5.5: 2.5, but then lost against the eventual world champion Spasski with 2.5: 5.5. In the prestigious match between the USSR and the rest of the world in Belgrade in 1970 , he played on the top board, where he balanced the three encounters with Spasski (one defeat, one win, one draw ) and won the game against Spasski's substitute Leonid Stein . At the 1970 Palma de Mallorca interzonal tournament he came second (shared with Efim Geller and Robert Huebner ) and defeated Wolfgang Uhlmann 5.5: 3.5 in the 1971 quarter-finals , but was then beaten 6: 0 by Fischer in the semi-finals in Denver . In 1976 he won another interzonal tournament in Biel , but was eliminated in the 1977 candidates' tournament with 3.5: 6.5 against Portisch. After that he slowly lost touch with the immediate world leaders. His last interzonal tournament he played in 1982 in Las Palmas and reached 7th place there. At the tournament in Nikšić 1983 he finished second behind Garry Kasparov .

In the 1970s Larsen lived in Las Palmas and took part in the Spanish team championship five times ; 1974 to 1977 he played for the team of CA Caja Insular de Ahorros , with whom he was Spanish team champion in 1976 and 1977 , in 1978 for the champions UD Las Palmas . In 1980, Larsen met his future wife Laura, a doctor of law and attorney, in Buenos Aires . Since then he has lived in Argentina .

In 1988 he went down in the history of computer chess by becoming the first grandmaster to lose a game under tournament conditions against a computer, Deep Thought .

Larsen was considered a very original player. The opening 1. b3 ( ECO code A01, Larsen system ) is named after him . In addition to his autobiography, which has been translated into German, English, French, Russian and Spanish, he published several textbooks in the Danish language. In the chess magazine Kaissiber he wrote the regular column without a tie , in which he answered questions from readers.

Larsen's best Elo number was 2660 in the first official Elo list from July 1971. This put him in fourth place in the world rankings. His best historical Elo number before the Elo numbers were introduced was 2755 in February 1971. According to these calculations, he was at number 3 in the world rankings at that time (as in the other seven months of 1970 and 1971).

Memorable games

Larsen - Petrosyan, Los Angeles 1966

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

Position after 24.… Bg7. White won with 25. Qxg6

Larsen played one of his most famous winning games against Tigran Petrosjan at the Piatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles in 1966, in which he was able to make an effective queen sacrifice against the reigning world champion .

Larsen - Petrosyan 1-0

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6 ( accelerated dragon variant ) 5. Be3 Bg7 6. c4 Nf6 7. Nc3 Ng4 8. Qxg4 Nxd4 9. Qd1 Ne6 10. Qd2 (meanwhile 10. Rc1 is considered More precisely. Then Da5 11. b4 has to be prevented.) d6 11. Be2 Bd7 12. 0–0 0–0 13. Rad1 Bc6 14. Nd5 Re8 15. f4 Nc7 16. f5 Na6 17. Bg4 Nc5 18. fxg6 hxg6 19.Qf2 Rf8 20.e5 Bxe5 21.Qh4 Bxd5 22.Rxd5 Ne6 23.Rf3 Bf6 24.Qh6 Bg7 diagram 25.Qxg6 Nf4 26.Rxf4 fxg6 27.Be6 + Rf7 28.Rxf7 Kh8 29.Rg5 b5 30.Rg3 1: 0

His losing game Larsen - Spasski, Belgrade 1970 is also well known .

literature

• Bent Larsen: Practical Opening Theory. What should black play? The open variant in the Spanish game. Verlag Das Schach-Archiv / Rattmann, Hamburg 1967.
• Bent Larsen: I play to win. Kühnle-Woods publishing house, Zurich 1971, OCLC 6809173 .
• Eric Brøndum: Bent Larsen, the fighter. Dansk Skakforlag, Copenhagen 1978, ISBN 87-87187-08-6 .
• Bent Larsen: All characters attack. Volume 1, SchachDepot Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812856-0-4 .
• Larsen. 1935-1965. (Bind I). Ed .: Jan Løfberg & Erik André Andersen. København, Løfbergs Forlag, 2014. ISBN 978-87-92772-03-9 .

Web links

Commons : Bent Larsen  - Collection of Images

• Literature by and about Bent Larsen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Playable chess games by Bent Larsen on chessgames.com (English)
• Issue of Skakbladet magazine from February 22, 2010 (PDF; 3.9 MB) Special edition for Larsen's 75th birthday (Danish)
• Edward Winter : Bent Larsen (1935-2010) (English, with numerous pictures)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Münder: The Danish hurricane: Bent Larsen is 75! In: de.chessbase.com. March 4, 2010, accessed November 15, 2019.
2. ↑ Bent Larsen passed away In: de.chessbase.com. September 10, 2010, accessed November 15, 2019.
3. ^ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002 . Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 74.
4. ↑ Bent Larsen's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
5. ↑ Bent Larsen's results at Spanish team championships on olimpbase.org (English)
6. ↑ Bent Larsen's Elo history up to 2001 at olimpbase.org (English)
7. ↑ Bent Larsen's historical Elo numbers on chessmetrics.com (English)