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The King's Men Sun, Nov 21, 1971 – Page 57 · The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) · Newspapers.com
The King's Men: Larsen Has to Scuttle the French, then Fischer Attacks his Sicilian by Merrill Dowden
Last week this column carried the first game of the Fischer-Larsen match in the world challenge series. In it, Larsen as Black, adopted the French Defense. He is believed to have spent much time attempting to perfect the French in anticipation of Fischer's 1. P-K4.
However, Fischer tore the defense to shreds and Larsen, disheartened, abandoned his game plan and turned to the Sicilian in the third game of the match, which is given below.
American grandmaster Robert Byrne, who annotated the games, points out that the Danish champion erred seriously on his eleventh turn, when he played Q-B1. “A blunder as serious as this,” Byrne said, “coming so early in the game, can only be explained by the demoralizing effect of his two successive losses.”
Otherwise, Byrne continued, “I think anyone would instinctively avoid setting up QN3 as a fork square, especially when a Knight has a quick access to it. His idea, for what it is worth, was to put counter pressure on the K-BP, hoping to compel resolution of the tension in the center.”
