Master of the Counter Attack

I was looking through Bent Larsen's Best Games of Chess: Master of Counter Attack by Bent Larsen  (Harding Simpole, 1970). —This book was also republished by New in Chess as Bent Larsen's Best Games: Fighting Chess with the Great Dane in 2014 (the photo of Larsen was taken from it's cover).

I thought I reprint the preface, which I thought was exceptional and his short autobiography leading up to the first game (during his King's Gambit period). Together they give a little insight into Larsen the man and Larsen the journalist. Larsen displays neither false modesty nor braggadocio, yet isn't totally dispassionate either.  
   As Tigran Petrosian wrote: [Larsen's] boldness and his concrete and non-routine approach to positions cannot fail to appeal to all connoisseurs of chess.

PREFACE
   PLAYING over a game of chess in a book is something quite different from witnessing it in the tournament room. The masters are missing, also the spectators and the whole excited atmosphere. You must also do without that wonderful feeling of being present when something happens; but it may console you that most spectators probably did not really understand what happened. Personally, I am inclined to believe that the most important place is not the tournament hall but the analysis room, where the public has the opportunity to discuss the games with a master. But, alas, often there is no such room.
   In a book we are in the analysis room-but without the questions and answers. The author has, therefore, to guess some of the questions. The tournament hall is not very near, but it is to be hoped that the reader will catch a glimpse of it now and then.
   A chess master knows his own games better than those played by others; but can he judge them objectively? This ought to be possible, for the objective judgement of a position-although one is 'involved', guilty of the emergence of this position-is exactly what a chess master has experience in. So I have tried to write objectively. But this does not mean that the annotations would have been the same if these games had been played and annotated by another chess master.
   In some places you will find a long story about a move I am obviously proud of, where others would have passed it by in silence. Indeed, one can ask if the differences (often exaggerated by journalists!) between the styles of chess masters are not more clearly seen in their annotations than in their play. Finally, a player's own judgement of a certain move may, of course, be influenced by his knowing whether it was an easy decision or not; if it cost an hour on his clock, he may find this sufficient reason for comment.
   For some of these games I have, of course, looked at annotations by others, and in a few places you will find remarks about mistakes they have made in commenting. If the author of such comments is mentioned, no reflection on him is intended. We all make mistakes.
   I have mentioned by name some whose analysis I have studied with special interest! Again, bad notes annoy me sometimes especially if one of my own games is broken on the wheel; but this irritation can hardly be of interest to my readers. We sometimes meet the foolish question: 'Is chess an art?' Well, probably it is, at least sometimes. But the word 'art' is often misused.
   You may compare a book such as this one to an artist's showing with pleasure some of his best paintings to a guest, but to complete this comparison I must also add that in the notes, in the variations of the analysis, his basic attitude must still be impartial, scientific.
    Gentofte, Autumn, 1969                                                                           BENT LARSEN

THE BEGINNING
   I was born on the 4th of March, 1935, according to my birth certificate, in Tilsted near the little town of Thisted, in north-western Jutland. In these paragraphs I shall stick to events about which I have a more or less clear memory.
In January, 1942, just after we had moved to another town, Holstebro, I caught several children's diseases and learnt how to play chess. I recovered from chicken-pox and mumps without any aftereffects: with chess it was a little different. My teacher was another boy, by name of Jorgen. I vaguely remember one of our first games.  He captured all my pieces and still had two rooks left, and he very much enjoyed forcing my poor King to the edge of the board and giving mate. It appeared that my father knew the game, and we sometimes played. When I was twelve I beat him almost every time; then I entered the chess club. At that time I also began to borrow chess books at the public library. I even found a chess book at home nobody knew how it had got into the house. Probably the former owner had forgotten it. This book had a certain influence on the development of my play. About the King's Gambit it said that this opening is strong like a storm, nobody can tame it. In the author's opinion modern chess masters were cowards, because they had not got the guts to play the King's Gambit. Naturally, I did not like to be a chicken and, until about 1952, the favorite opening of the romantic chess masters was also mine!
   In the autumn of 1947 the Holstebro Chess Club started a junior section, of which I became a member. I beat the other boys, and by Christmas it was decided to let me play with the grown-ups. But nowadays when I say in interviews that I have never had any trainer, this is only 99 percent correct.  H. P. Hansen led that junior club, and I dimly remember that he showed us some opening variations on the demonstration board. A year and a half later I was club champion, and I am not willing to give H.P. all the credit for that—but he is really the only trainer I ever had.
   Each year Holstebro played a match against the neighboring town of Herning, and on 15th February, 1948, I was in the team not on the last board, the 80th, where I had expected to be placed, but on board 25. We lost the match but I won, and the game was published in one of the local newspapers with friendly comments by Herning's top player, Bjorn Nielsen, four times Danish champion.
My opponent's name was Lauridsen, and the famous Three Pawn Gambit was obviously just the right opening against him:

   The game says something about the style of my play in those days, but not very much about my strength. Among some correspondence games I played at that time, however, there are two that indicate that I was beginning to get an understanding of positional play. No doubt my playing strength increased very quickly, but I am not one of the prodigies in chess history. My strength when I was fourteen was nothing near the class of, for instance, Morphy, Capablanca, Reshevsky, Pomar, Fischer or Mecking. But when we moved from Holstebro in 1950 I was clearly the strongest player in that town of 14,000 inhabitants, and two years later I had mowed down all opposition in Aalborg (100,000) and could not learn much more there. So it was lucky for me that I finished high-school and wept to Copenhagen, where I planned to become a civil engineer.
By this time I had qualified to enter the Danish championship, and already in 1951 I had represented Denmark at the junior world championship in Birmingham. My lack of experience considered, my sharing fourth place was an amazing result. Game No. 1 in this book is taken from this tournament.
   In the New Year tournaments of 1951-2 and 1952-3 in Trondheim I took first place ahead of some of the best juniors from Norway, Sweden and Finland. I was becoming more experienced, but in the junior world championship of 1953 in Copenhagen I only shared fifth place. True, it was strong company, Panno and Darga ahead of Olafsson and Ivkov, and then Penrose, Sherwin and Keller equal with me probably the strongest group in all the world junior championships.
   In the Scandinavian championship immediately afterwards, won by Olafsson, I made too many stupid mistakes. But for a long time I considered game No. 2 one of my very best achievements, probably because I was trying to change my style and my opening repertoire; so I was especially satisfied when I succeeded in winning in purely positional style. But of course I did not forget how to attack, and scamped opening play deserved severe punishment, which it got in game No. 8, played in a club match in the autumn of 1953.
   In 1954 I won all nine games in a weak Copenhagen championship, and full of optimism I went to Aarhus to win the Danish title. 0 in round one, 1/2 in round two, 0 in round three!—but then I won six in a row, which with a draw and another win made me Danish champion.  Since then I have won the title in 1955, 1956, 1959, 1963 and 1964, in other words every time that I participated.
   In the championship of 1954 my play was not very good in all games, but the one against Eigil Pedersen, the winner the year before, can bear closer examination. I give it with my comments from the Danish chess magazine Skakbladet, to show my quite sensible reflections, positional and tournament-practical. I was about ripe for the international master tournaments.

JUNIOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, BIRMINGHAM, 1951
Black: L. Joyner
King's   Gambit

   Quite well played by little me, but not a very difficult game. It was awarded one of the two prizes for the best games in the tournament, which came as a surprise to me. Ivkov, the tournament winner, had played a brilliant game against the West German Rosen but had not entered it for the special prizes. Maybe modesty, maybe laziness, I do not know.

Interesting....I find his style hard to digest; him and Gyula Breyer!

I enjoy the degree and style of introspection in his writing.  Refreshing.

Thanks for the great read! 

Bent Larsen also wrote one of the unusually name chess books of all time: ZOOM 001.  The title stands for "Zero Hour For Operative Opening Models".  It is a study of the Grunfeld Indian Opening Structure.  

Very interesting read as always Batgirl!

I tend not to trust systems, especially universal ones that are beyond my understanding.

Larsen wrote: "ZOOM 001 is a master-file for thinking...it makes life on th chess-board more simple"

The only problem is, you have to be a genius to understand any of it.

"you are able to play the Grunfeld Indiian Structure as White against any Black defense."

"IF you have no idea of what 'it' is all about - then all your 'theoretical' knowledge comes to naught - the opening will leave you with a certain amount of pieces spread out all over the board - and you do not know what to do now - in short- you are lost. ZOOM 001 is a key - an all-around understanding of chess, a complete and integrated opening system, White of Black, a method to be utilized by the enormous amount of everyday-players in order to create a logical flow in their style of play. "

I find his games rather refreshing.

Thanks. 

Thanks for reading it.

I like his writing style. His annotations are good too.

Larsen considered himself the best of the west. He demanded and got the 1st board in the 1970 Match USSR vs. Rest of the World, before Fischer. In 1971 he lost the Candidates semi-final against Fischer 6 - 0. In 1979 after mental recovery Larsen won as black against Karpov with his Scandinavian Defence.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068107 

I feel that's very loaded phraseology.  Larsen's star had been rising and he had been quite active with good results. Fischer, on the other hand,  although higher rated, hadn't played in a single event in well over a year.  It seems Larsen wasn't being arrogant as much as he was demanding fairness. 

A few months prior to the event, the International Chess Writers' Association published a list of whom they agreed to be the best (active) chess players. Larsen was #4. Ahead of him were 3 Soviets:  Spassky, Korchnoi and Petrosian.

Chess Life and Review wrote:
"Although he had not played a clock game in 18 months, Fischer, in recognition of his brilliant record, had been offered first board. But Larsen, who during the same period had compiled his best record to date, threatened to withdraw unless he were given the top spot-"as a matter of principle." Unexpectedly, Bobby consented to step down . According to the N.Y. TIMES that was 'a most un-Bobby-Iike action and it helped to avoid an international incident.' Noblesse oblige is how it appeared to his fans; but Bobby's comment was 'Larsen's got a point. Besides, to create a better image doesn't require that I do anything dishonorable.'"

At the USSR vs Rest of the World... I don't know what's up with that chess set.

The results of the USSR vs Rest of the World had Larsen earning 2.5 pt /4 on first board and Fischer earning 3/4 on second board. In fact all 4 top boards (including also Portisch and Hort) had plus results. The lower boards lost the match for the Rest of the World.

Larsen was right to demand first board --i.e Elo doesn't tell the whole story-- and Fischer was right to concede.  

Of course Fischer's inactivity was somewhat deceptive. He came back far stronger than anyone could have imagined.

Nice reading moment. Thanx for posting it!

Nice article on great player.  I met Larsen twice and have always considered him to be what they call an "old world gentleman."  Thanks, Sarah.

Thanks Rob.  I would have liked to have met Bent Larsen.  I'm just now becoming really familiar with him and I like him very much (from my objective distance). 

Anyone who plays the Kings Gambit without fear is OK in my book.  Great article!

Bent Larsen is one of my chess heroes. 

At the Canadian Open in Montreal in... 1974?... Bent Larsen invited me out for a beer.