Bent Larsen

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

Life

Bent Larsen in 1954, 1955, 1956, 1959, 1963 and 1964 national champion from Denmark. The title of International Grandmaster in 1956, he won by an outstanding result at the Chess Olympiad in Moscow by scoring out of 18 possible points on the first board of the Danish team 14. In total, he played six times at the Chess Olympiads in Denmark and won a gold medal (1956 in Moscow ) and twice a third place in the rating board.

Between 1964 and 1971 he was next Bobby Fischer as best player outside the Soviet Union. He won in that time, the interzonal tournaments in 1964 in Amsterdam ( shared with Vasily Smyslov, Boris Spassky and Mikhail Tal ) and 1967 in Sousse, as well as tournaments in Havana in 1967, Winnipeg in 1967, Palma 1967 Monaco 1968. In his first Candidates Tournament 1965, he turned in quarterfinals Borislav Ivkov with 5.5 to 2.5, but lost in the semifinal against valley with 4.5-5.5. Candidates tournament in 1968, he defeated first Lajos Portisch with 5.5 to 2.5, but then lost to the eventual champions Spassky with 2.5-5.5. At the prestigious competition USSR against the rest of the world in 1970 in Belgrade, he played on top board, where he won the three meetings with Spassky equalized designed ( one defeat, one win, one draw) and the game against Spasskis substitute Leonid Stein. Interzonal Palma 1970 he was second ( shared with Efim Geller, and Robert Hübner ) and defeated in the quarterfinals of the candidates tournament in 1971 Wolfgang Uhlmann 5.5 to 3.5, but was then beaten in the semifinals in Denver Fischer 6-0. In 1976, he won again in Biel an Interzonal, but different in the Candidates Tournament in 1977 against Portisch from 3.5-6.5. Then he slowly lost the connection to the immediate world leaders. His last Interzonal, he played in 1982 in Las Palmas and there reached 7th place At the tournament in Nikšić in 1983, he finished behind Garry Kasparov in second place.

1980 Larsen learned in Buenos Aires his future wife, Laura, a doctor of law and lawyer, know. Since then, he lived in Argentina.

In 1988 he also entered the history of computer chess, by being the first Grand Master a game under tournament conditions against a computer, Deep Thought lost.

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

Larsen's best Elo rating was 2660 in the second published Elo list of January 1971 ( right after the introduction of the rating of the year 1970). So he lay on the shared third place in the world rankings. The unofficial project of historical Elo ratings calculated for him a rating of best of 2755 in February 1971. According to these calculations, it was also 1970/71 for eight months at No. 3 in the world rankings.

Memorable games

One of his most famous win games played against Larsen Petrosian at the Piatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles in 1966, in which he could attach against the reigning World Champion take a showy queen sacrifice.

Larsen - Petrossian

1.e2 -e4 c7 - c5 2.Sg1 -f3 c6 3.d2 -d4 - Sb8 c5xd4 4.Sf3xd4 g7- g6 5.Lc1 -e3 Bf8 - g7 6.c2 - c4 Ng8 - f6 7.Sb1 - c3 Nf6 g4 8.Dd1xg4 Sc6xd4 9.Dg4 -d1 -d2 Nd4 - e6 10.Dd1 d7 - d6 11.Lf1 - e2 Bc8 - d7 12.0-0 0-0 13.Ta1 -d1 -d5 Bd7 - c6 14.Sc3 Rf8 - e8 15.f2 f4 - f5 16.f4 Se6 - c7 Sc7 - a6 17.Le2 - g4 Sa6 c5 18.f5xg6 h7xg6 19.Dd2 - f2 -f8 Re8 20.e4 - e5 Lg7xe5 21.Df2 - h4 Lc6xd5 22.Td1xd5 Sc5 - e6 23.Tf1 -f3 - f6 LE5 24.Dh4 - h6 - g7 Lf6 25.Dh6xg6 Se6 - f4 26.Tf3xf4 f7xg6 27.Lg4 - e6 Rf8 - f7 28.Tf4xf7 Kg8 - h8 - 29.Td5 b7 - b5 g5 - g3 30.Tg5 1-0

Very well known is his loss game Larsen - Spassky, Belgrade 1970.