Bent Larsen

Bent Larsen
Bent Larsen (1961)
Full name	Jørgen Bent Larsen
Country	Denmark
Born	(1935-03-04)4 March 1935 Tilsted near Thisted, Denmark
Died	9 September 2010(2010-09-09) (aged 75) Buenos Aires
Title	Grandmaster (1956)
Peak rating	2660 (January 1971)

Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess Grandmaster and author. Larsen was known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, and he was the first Western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union's dominance in chess. He is considered to be the strongest player born in Denmark and the strongest from Scandinavia until the emergence of Magnus Carlsen.

Larsen was a six time Danish Champion and a Candidate for the World Chess Championship on four occasions, reaching the semifinal three times. He had multiple wins over all seven World Champions who held the title from 1948 to 1985: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, and Anatoly Karpov, but lifetime negative scores against them. On a percentage basis, his best score against a World Champion was with Max Euwe. Larsen and Euwe met over the board only once, at the Munich Olympiad in 1958; the game ended in a draw. From the early 1970s, he divided his year between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires, with his Argentinian-born wife. He suffered from diabetes and died in 2010 from a cerebral haemorrhage.

Larsen was born in Tilsted, near Thisted in Denmark and was educated at Aalborg Cathedral School. In January 1942 Larsen contracted a number of childhood diseases. Although none had any permanent effects, it was during this period that Larsen discovered chess. He went on to represent Denmark twice in the World Junior Championship, in 1951 at Birmingham (placing fifth) and in 1953 at Copenhagen (placing eighth). He started playing seriously at the age of 17 when he moved to Copenhagen to study Civil Engineering, but he never graduated choosing instead to play chess professionally. He became an International Master at the age of 19 in 1954, from his bronze-medal performance on board one at the Amsterdam Olympiad. He won his first of six Danish Championships in 1954 repeating this feat in 1955, 1956, 1959, 1963, and 1964.