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Analysis The Key To Chess Fri, Jun 16, 1972 – 61 · The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com
Analysis The Key To Chess
“…Larsen's Opening, named after the Danish grandmaster and now the subject of a new monography by the American master, Andy Soltis is not entirely without roots.
The move 1 P-QN3 does often lead back into well explored paths, many of its patterns are familiar from other openings — Reti's, Bird's, the Queen's Indian Reversed. Soltis points out that the opening of the game between Bobby Fischer and Filip, presented here, had already been played up to the 10th move in a match between Flohr and Stoltz in 1931.
What Larsen had done, of course, was to analyze the move and its consequences more extensively than any-one else and more importantly, had played it into respectability. In chess there
is nothing like success to make others take notice, and it was Larsen's numerous victories with 1 P-QN3 that compelled others to examine it and eventually take it up. By now it has become part of the routine, and even some of the most conservative players try it occasionally.
What Soltis has done in his monograph ($2.40, published by Chess Digest magazine. P.O. Box 21225, Dallas, Tex., 75211) is to classify the patterns that can evolve after 1 P-QN3, relate them to each other and present the necessary material in clear form.
The move 1 P-QN3 really achieved status in 1970, when Fischer started to play it. His victory over Filip was scored in the interzonal at Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in that year.
Larsen's victory, over the young British star Raymond Keene also came at a tournament in Mallorca, during a smaller, less important one about a year later.”
