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 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 year between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires, with his Argentinian-born wife. He suffered from diabetes, and died in 2010 from a cerebral haemorrhage. Career Early life 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. Larsen defeated Friðrik Ólafsson in an exhibition match at Oslo in 1955 by 4½–3½. 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. Young Grandmaster Larsen became an International Grandmaster in 1956 with his gold-medal performance on board one at the Moscow Olympiad, where he drew with World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. He tied for 1st–2nd places at Hastings 1956–57 on 6½/9 with Svetozar Gligorić. At Dallas 1957, he scored 7½/14 for a shared 3rd–4th place; the winners were Gligorić and Samuel Reshevsky. At