About Bent Larsen
Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess grandmaster and author. Known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play, he was the second-strongest non-Soviet player, behind only Bobby Fischer, for much of the 1960s and 1970s. 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. From the early 1970s onward, he divided his years between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires with his Argentinian-born wife Laura Beatriz Benedini. He suffered from diabetes, and he died in 2010 from a cerebral haemorrhage. Although none had any permanent effects, it was during this period that he discovered chess. He won his first of six Danish Championships in 1954, repeating this feat in 1955, 1956, 1959, 1963 and 1964. He took first prize at the Gijón International Chess Tournament in 1956, ahead of Klaus Darga and Jan Hein Donner, and in the same year won at Copenhagen with 8/9.
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