Larsen

by Cyrus Lakdawala

Bent Larsen was one of the most influential chess players of the 20th century. He was a four-time Candidate for the World Championship and the first westerner to seriously challenge the Soviet Union's post-war dominance of the game. Larsen was admired by fans for his creative and combative style. He was a risk-taker who always sought complex positions. He felt completely at home in defense and was an opportunistic attacker. While other grandmasters would shy away from offbeat openings, Larsen would embrace and develop them. In this book, former American Open Champion Cyrus Lakdawala studies his favourite Larsen games and examines Larsen's skills in the key areas of attack and defense, initiative, exploiting imbalances, accumulating advantages and endgame play. He demonstrates clearly how we can all improve by learning from Larsen's play.

Move by Move provides an ideal platform to study chess. By continually challenging the reader to answer probing questions throughout the book, the Move by Move format greatly encourages the learning and practicing of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to improve your chess skills and knowledge.

Genres: Chess

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2015

Reviews

[maarten mellegers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uitgebreide stoeptegel over een voor mij onbekende schaker. Waar de andere boeken een chronologische volgorde aanhouden is dit boek meer thematisch van aard. Dit is ook een boek uit de collectie van de overleden clubschaker. Voor mij interessant om te lezen maar weinig toepasbaar in het echte toernooischaak.

[Alberto · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally gave it 4 stars, but now I am reading Bent Larsen's Best Games. A lot of the games in Lakdawala's book overlap with Larsen's book. That is perhaps not unexpected, but what is unforgivable is that Lakdawala's annotations are so much worse than the older book. And it's not for lack of space. If Lakdawala removed all his ridiculous attempts at "humor," there's be plenty of space to include all of Larsen's original annotations where these have not been improved upon (which is a lot of them).