Bent Larsen

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Bent Larsen, 1998
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Bent Larsen, 1998

Bent Larsen (born March 4, 1935) is a Danish chess player. He lives in Argentina.

Larsen is considered to be the strongest chess player ever born in Denmark. He has won the Interzonal tournament on 3 occasions (1964 at Amsterdam, 1967 at Sousse in Tunisia, and 1976 at Biel in Switzerland). He became an International Master at the age of 19 in 1954 and two years later gained the rank of International Grandmaster.

In the 1965 Candidates matches he lost in the semi-final to Mikhail Tal, a former world champion. In 1968 he lost the semi-final to Boris Spassky, who went on to win the title, and in 1971 lost the semi-final 0-6 to Bobby Fischer, who also went on to win the title. Larsen later claimed in a Kasparov.com interview (1998) that his one-sided loss was due in part to his condition during the match: "The organizers chose the wrong time for this match. I was languid with the heat and Fischer was better prepared for such exceptional circumstances... I saw chess pieces through a mist and, thus, my level of playing was not good." In 1988 he lost a game to Deep Thought in the Software Toolworks Championship, becoming the first Grandmaster and the player with the highest ELO rating (by then 2560) to be defeated by a computer in tournament play.

Larsen has continued to play occasionally in tournaments to the present day. In 1999 he finished 7th of 10 in the Danish Championship, but in the 2000 event he was forced to withdraw when he became seriously ill with an edema, requiring brain surgery. He has played in only a few tournaments in Buenos Aries since then. He was 4th in the 2002 Najdorf Memorial knock-out. By July 2004 his ELO rating in the FIDE list was 2461.

Larsen is an imaginative player, more willing to try unorthodox ideas than most other top players and is noted for occasionally employing unusual openings. He is one of the very few modern grandmasters to have employed Bird's Opening (1. f4) with any regularity and has long been associated with the move 1. b3, a system commonly known as Larsen's Opening or the Nimzo-Larsen Attack in his (and Aron Nimzowitsch's) honour.

Although Larsen has a negative record against Bobby Fischer, he beat Fischer twice with the black pieces. Here's one of his wins from Santa Monica in 1966 (moves given in Algebraic chess notation):

  1. e4 e5
  2. Nf3 Nc6
  3. Bb5 a6
  4. Ba4 Nf6
  5. O-O Nxe4
  6. d4 b5
  7. Bb3 d5
  8. dxe5 Be6
  9. c3 Bc5
  10. Nbd2 O-O
  11. Bc2 Bf5
  12. Nb3 Bg4
  13. Nxc5 Nxc5
  14. Re1 Re8
  15. Be3 Ne6
  16. Qd3 g6
  17. Bh6 Ne7
  18. Nd4 Bf5
  19. Nxf5 Nxf5
  20. Bd2 Qh4
  21. Qf1 Nc5
  22. g3 Qc4
  23. Qg2 Nd3
  24. Bxd3 Qxd3
  25. Bg5 c6
  26. g4 Ng7
  27. Re3 Qd2
  28. b3 b4
  29. Qh3 bxc3
  30. Qh6 Ne6 0-1

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