The Playing Style and Authorship of Bent Larsen
The Playing Style and Authorship of Bent Larsen
Larsen was known as a deep thinking and highly imaginative player, more willing to try unorthodox ideas and to take more risks than most of his peers. This aspect of his play could even manifest itself in his choice of openings. "He is a firm believer in the value of surprise. Consequently, he often resorts to dubious variations in various openings. He also likes to complicate positions even though it may involve considerable risk. He has a great deal of confidence in his game and fears no one. His unique style has proven extremely effective against relatively weak opponents but has not been too successful against top-notchers."
He was one of the very few modern grandmasters to have employed Bird's Opening (1.f4) with any regularity, and had a long-term association with the move 1.b3, a system commonly known as Larsen's Opening or the Nimzo–Larsen Attack in his (and Aron Nimzowitsch's) honor. He played the Dutch Defence with success at a time when the opening was rarely seen at the top level. He revived the almost dormant Bishop's Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Bc4) with success in 1964 and explored new ways for Black to seek activity in the Philidor Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6). Indeed, he wrote a short monograph on the Philidor, Why Not The Philidor Defense?, in 1971. He was also the first top player to successfully use the Grand Prix Attack against the Sicilian Defence (1.e4 c5 2.f4), spurring a sudden and sustained gain in its popularity. In the mid-1960s, he showed surprising faith in Alekhine's Defence (1.e4 Nf6) and even employed it on important occasions. He played the rare Scandinavian Defence 1.e4 d5 to defeat World Champion Anatoly Karpov in 1979, sparking renewed interest in that variation. A favourite line in the Caro–Kann Defence (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ gxf6) is co-named for him and David Bronstein; the idea is to accept a weakness to the Black pawn structure in exchange for an unbalancing of the position and retaining the bishop pair.
The Grünfeld Defence (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5) was another opening that became a frequent choice of Larsen with the Black pieces and similarly, he placed considerable reliance on Grünfeld-Indian systems as White. This led him to co-author a groundbreaking 1979 book (with Steffen Zeuthen) on this opening and similar structures (ZOOM 001—Zero Hour for Operative Opening Models). His book Larsen's selected games of chess, 1948–69 (1970) is renowned for annotations that delve into chess psychology and the effective use of rare openings. A chapter of the book gives some of Larsen's thoughts on his style and he upholds the views of Polugaevsky and Gligorić that he indulged in flank attacks and favored the advance of rooks pawns more than other contemporary masters. He was also content to be described as an aggressive player, stemming from his dislike of draws. He did, however, dispute the notion that he would willingly accept dubious positions in order to complicate tactics, a characteristic he attributed more to Tal. It should also be noted that later reprints of his book have employed the epithet (and sub-title) "Master of Counter Attack".
Among other examples of Larsen's writing, he was one of seven top grandmasters who wrote chapters for the 1974 book How to Open a Chess Game. He edited the tournament book for San Antonio 1972. When Ken Smith played most of his games in that event with the white pieces using his patented Smith-Morra Gambit, Larsen quipped—after one of Smith's opponents responded to e4 with e6 entering a French Defense and avoiding the gambit—"stronger was c5, winning a pawn!" He also wrote the well-received Karpov Vs. Korchnoi: World Chess Championship, 1978, which was published within days of the match ending and was the first book in any language on the 1978 World Championship match.
