Bent Larsen's Best Games: Fighting Chess with the Great Dane

by Bent Larsen

Bent Larsen (1935-2010) was one of the greatest fighters chess has ever seen. In his rich career the great Dane defeated all World Champions from Botvinnik to Karpov. He was a Candidate for the World Championship four times and became one of the most successful tournament players of his time. His uncompromising style and his unorthodox thinking made him popular with chess players all around the globe. In 1967/1968 Larsen won five international elite events in a row, a truly spectacular achievement. His successes were such that Bobby Fischer let him play first board in the legendary match Soviet Union vs. the World in 1970 in Belgrade. Bent Larsen also was a highly original chess writer and an extremely productive chess journalist. Not surprisingly the first chess book that Magnus Carlsen ever studied was written by the strongest Scandinavian player before him. This collection brings together more than 120 of Bent Larsen s best games, annotated by himself. His comments are lucid, to the point, instructive and humorous. Together, these games are a tribute to his genius and a continuous joy to read and play through."

Genres: Chess

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Goh Kheng Hua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary Fighting Chess

Fighting chess all the way! I read this books many years ago in a hard copy format published by Bell, it was then titled "Larsen's Selected Games". Both games against Petrosian are master piece in their own right! Well worth the time to play through all the games in this book!

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best chess book I read this year. Larsen was so creative and willing to try anything to get into a fight. So many wild positions. Having fun trying out some of his opening ideas.

[Raymond 8E · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a very good book
With an amazing analysis of his games

[Alberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

One observation up front: there are many errors in the transcription from descriptive to algebraic (e.g., Bc4 when Bf4 is meant, etc.). However this is not the reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.

The 50 games from the original edition are outstanding, but the newer material (starting with chapter 14) is very uneven. Many of the games are of low quality, against inferior opposition, marred by multiple gross blunders, or just plain boring. Most of them have only the scarcest of annotations. Several suffer from more than one of these sins.