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| Oct-31-08 | | Harvestman: My take on Larsen, as a fan of his, is that he has always played 'ideas', even if he knows them to be be unsound. Sort of "lets see what happens if I try this". Sometimes it works. With advancing age, it hasn't come off. Oh, and respect to anyone who would rather keep trying things than take a quick draw just to get off a zero score, even if it means finishing 0/9. I suspect Larsen has a stubborn streak, that makes him keep trying his ideas, even when they aren't working. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | acirce: However, playing things like 1.e4 a5 is hardly an 'idea'... it is not something that has a certain logic behind it even though not completely sound, it is simply something that is plain bad and that is it. Larsen knows it and plays it anyway. I don't understand it at all but surely it is his choice. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | Harvestman: Oh I agree, the openings here are mostly rubbish. I'm saying that to some extent this has always been Larsen's style. It just seems to have become more extreme with age. Out of curiosity, I'm going to look up any other recent Larsen games I can find, and see if this sort of thing is a recent trend, or just a one-off in this tournament where he decided to try some really wild moves. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | Harvestman: Well that didn't take long. Chessgames has no other Larsen games in the database since 2004. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | JuliusCaesar: It's tragic to see Larsen's play at this tournament. I've just gone through three of his games – horrifying stuff. Larsen was never a purist, but here he's taking brinkmanship to a ridiculous level. I 'd be interested to hear what he has to say about why he played the way he did. Because this smacks of self-destruction, not an old guy having some fun with the younger generation. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | Ziggurat: I read an interesting theory about this debacle, which was that this was Larsen's homage to Sämisch. Apparently, when Larsen was young, he played in a tournament with the aging Sämisch, who went 0-15 in the tournament, losing all his games on time. (He was famous for losing on time.) Larsen was very taken with this and wrote an article about it. This tournament could be a "reenactment" of Sämisch's tournament, where Larsen's equivalent of losing on time would be weird openings, which he is known for. Don't know how much truth there is to this theory but it is interesting. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | JuliusCaesar: Well, let's hope so, Ziggurat. I wouldn't put it past someone like Larsen to do that. He's always marched to the beat of his own drummer. Anyway, here's hoping it's his first and only tribute to Fritz Sämisch. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | Caissanist: I don't know which games <Julius Caesar> is referring to, but only three or four of them look like blowouts to me. In the rest he seems to do OK until move 25 or so, when he apparently gets tired and starts making mistakes. Against Dos Santos he may even have had winning chances, before his blunder on move 27. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | vonKrolock: That tourney where Sämisch lost all his games on time, Büsum 1969, was a very strong top class event with then present and future candidates: Polugaevsky, Gligoric, Hübner, Ivkov, Szabo - besides of Larsen himself and other strong and experienced names like Szily, Bilek, Zaitsev, Bobotsov and a few others - in comparison, the field here sounds very modest, and Sämisch anyway was never a serious candidate - Golombek called him once 'a specialist in minor events' - (or something like that - quoting by memory). And also worth mentioning en passant, Larsen held a match with Chile's number one Ivan Morovic to a worthy +0=3-1 score some months ago - so the mystery is still to be explained - why not ask himself for an explanation!? - Anyway, I hope still to a Larsen's return sooner or later |
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| Oct-31-08 | | waustad: The sad thing for the other players is that nobody will remember anything about this tournament except that Larsen went in the tank. Of course, if Larsen hadn't gone in the tank nobody would have even heard of this tournament outside of Argentina. |
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| Oct-31-08 | | Caissanist: Thanks to vonKrolock for mentioning that match, the website is at http://scalise.maddsites.com/larsen.... Morovic is stronger than any of the players in this tournament so this was quite a good result for Larsen, especially since he was never that good a match player. I have to say, though, that Larsen's games from Magistral are a lot more fun to play over than the ones from the Morovic match. Probably Larsen thinks the same thing. |
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| Nov-01-08 | | Akuni: It could be a purposeful attempt to deflate his own rating. Abut as likely as anything else I've heard.
Except maybe that he's old and wants to do everything he couldn't do when he was a contender. |
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| Nov-02-08 | | vonKrolock: <Caissanist> Thank You for the link - Returning to my previous post, it would be unfair not to mention that at least Rodriguez and Garcia Palermo are in the <strong and experienced names> category, and other younger players in this field will become, or even surpass, being still very young... Events like this could arise also some reflexions of how the current sistem favours machinal and stereotypated play. A classification with grades, like 'dan' in some oriental sports, instead of the elo numbers, would maybe humanize Chess |
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| Nov-03-08 | | amateur05: Did Larsen really go mad, as his play in this tournament suggests, or is he just pretending and teasing everybody? Something like postmodern art. |
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| Nov-03-08 | | amateur05: I think I understand what this was. Psychological scars must resurface into the human mind before they can disappear. This principle lies at the heart of psychoanalysis. For Larsen, this tournament was nothing else but an attempted self treatment against his emotional trauma that was caused by the 0:6 defeat to Fischer. 35 years have passed but the whitewash still haunts him. Poor Larsen... |
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| Jun-06-10 | | cjgone: Larsen is my hero by playing ridiculous openings that at some points make little sense at all. Very out of book and very inspirational for me to gain the courage to start using such openings. :d |
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Sep-10-10
 | | Phony Benoni: Good grief. The man was 73 years old and in ill health. He knew there was no way he would do well in the tournament, that he would weaken late in the games due to lack of stamina, that very likely he'd never play in another tournament. So why not go out having some fun? I doubt he intended to lose the games deliberately, but he wasn't going to take the pathetic way out by making a lot of short draws. That wouldn't have been Larsen. |
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| Sep-11-10 | | twinlark: Yeah...just looks he was having a bit of fun at his last hurrah. This had been his first tourney in years. |
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Sep-11-10
| | Phony Benoni: And, come to think of it, have we already forgotten how much Larsen loved the rook pawns? |
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Jun-11-14
 | | offramp: An 8-minute out-of-focus video of this event at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp8.... No dialogue; just crappy music. |
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| Jun-11-14 | | GumboGambit: What did Larsen really have to lose by playing outside the box? Would a traditional middling draw-laden performance have invigorated his career? Would anyone have taken note? Facing your own mortality will affect your outlook on life. I suspect that if/when each of us are on our last days, we would have a better perspective on Larsens approach to this tournament. |
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| Jun-11-14 | | Petrosianic: "Playing out of the Box" = euphemism for "Playing badly". In the Larsen-Morovic match, played that same year, he had fun while avoiding a shutout too. |
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Oct-05-24
 | | MissScarlett: Where in Argentina did this tournament occur? |
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Oct-05-24
 | | Stonehenge: See https://www.argedrez.com.ar/Listado... or https://theweekinchess.com/html/twi.... (useful link to tournaments: https://theweekinchess.com/twic). |
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Oct-06-24
 | | Fusilli: <Miss Scarlet> In Buenos Aires, in the famous <Club Argentino de Ajedrez>, the site of the Alekhine v Capablanca 1927 match. |
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