Master Class Vol. 20 – Bent Larsen: When 'Carlsen's Weapon' Is Packaged for Club Players

I remember an evening in Da Nang, sitting in a cafe by the Han River, watching two high-school students eagerly dissecting a chess game on a phone. One said to the other: "Carlsen even plays 1...d5. If he can play it, so can we."

That sentence made me pause. Not because it was wrong, but because it was right in a deeply dangerous way.

Not long ago, an instructional chess product hit the market: Master Class Vol. 20 – Bent Larsen. It is a roughly 60-minute video on the Scandinavian Defense, presented by a FIDE Senior Trainer. The product promises that players can "play it the same day" with a simple, solid defensive system said to have been used by Magnus Carlsen. And Bent Larsen's name is placed on the cover to guarantee its heritage value.

Sound familiar?

This is not a chess-only story. It is the story of every sport once commercialisation reaches amateur players. And it is also the story of how we – people who love chess – should read a sports product.

To understand why this matters, it must be placed in the broader context of Vietnamese and global chess.

The Scandinavian Defense – also known as the Center Counter Defense – begins with 1.e4 d5. The move is bold: Black accepts an early queen trade, lets White occupy the centre, but gains a simple, low-theory, easy-to-remember structure. For more than a century it has existed as a "solid but unambitious" option at club level, occasionally appearing at major events as a tactical surprise. Its two main lines are 3...Qa5 (classical) and 3...Qd6 (modern), after 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3.

Bent Larsen – the name on the box – was a Danish player, one of the biggest names of the 1960s and 1970s. He reached a reported peak rating of around 2660 (2026) and was famous for his attacking style and love of offbeat openings. Larsen died in 2026. He never became World Champion, but he symbolised a creative, contrarian school of chess.

Magnus Carlsen needs no introduction. The Norwegian World Champion, icon of the computer era, is famous for using unusual openings to avoid theory. It is true that Carlsen has played 1...d5, at least in a handful of games recorded in databases.

The problem is this: the product fuses these two names – a past legend and a current champion – to sell an opening that fundamentally belongs to... club players.

In Vietnam, the market for chess instruction is growing fast. Young players and their parents increasingly seek online courses, video tutorials and training apps. In that environment, products carrying big names have enormous pull – but they also need to be read calmly.

If you read the product copy carefully, three claims stand out.

First: "Black gets an easy life in the opening." Second: "It is doubtful whether White can get an advantage." Third: "Carlsen has used it."

All three are partly true, but all three are exaggerated in the service of sales.

The technical crux: in the Scandinavian Defense, with best play, White still retains a small but persistent edge – not the dead-equal position the marketing implies.

Any player who has studied openings with computer assistance knows this. After 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3, White can choose a path leading to a mild edge in space and structure. That edge is not enough to win in most cases, but it exists – and at higher levels it accumulates. Modern engines typically evaluate the post-opening Scandinavian position with a small plus for White, somewhere between +0.3 and +0.5, depending on the line and the play.

So what is the claim "it is doubtful whether White can get an advantage"? It is the language of a salesperson, not a grandmaster. At elite level, nobody says "White has no advantage" about a Scandinavian. They say: "Black is extremely hard to beat at club level, but at master level, White will enjoy this position."

The difference lies in the question: who is this product for?

Over many years of covering chess events, I have noticed a worrying pattern. Young players – especially young women in Vietnam – often choose openings based on famous names rather than on what suits their own style. Every child wants to play like Carlsen. Every child wants to win. But the Scandinavian is not an opening to "win". It is an opening to "not lose".

Strategy is like people: you must know who you are before you try to become someone else. An attacking player should not choose the Scandinavian. A player who loves complex, many-piece positions should not choose the Scandinavian either. This opening belongs to players who enjoy structure, patience and precision – those who do not need to seize the initiative from the very first moves.

As for the claim "Carlsen has used it" – this is the weakest link in the chain. It is a statistical fallacy known as survivorship bias. When Carlsen plays an unusual opening, he wins not because the opening is strong, but because he is Carlsen. He can balance complex positions, calculate more deeply than his opponents, and convert seemingly ordinary positions into wins. His strength comes from skill, not from the opening. Attaching Carlsen's name to a product is a familiar marketing trick: borrowing the credibility of the best to instil trust in the buyer.

If you hand the Scandinavian to an 1800-rated player and say "Carlsen plays this", that player will not automatically win. They will face a prepared opponent, and the result will depend on their middlegame skill – something an opening cannot replace. At club level, a player who handles the Scandinavian well can win many games because opponents are unfamiliar with its peculiar structures. But once the opponent has prepared, the surprise advantage disappears.

Another odd point: the product is branded "Bent Larsen's Master Class", yet its content is 60 minutes on the Scandinavian. Other products in the Master Class series typically run for hours, covering a player's whole career. Here, a legendary name is used on the cover while the content is one specific opening. Buyers should check the actual length and contents before deciding. This is not fraud, but it is an ambiguity in brand positioning: a big name, narrow content.

In practical terms, the Scandinavian is a useful tool for club players. It saves time, is easy to remember, and is solid enough not to be easily beaten by unprepared opponents. But if a player misreads its value – thinking of it as a "weapon to win" rather than a "tool not to lose" – disappointment follows. They will lose games they thought they should win, and they will be baffled when the position grows complex.

In women's chess this matters even more. Young female players in Vietnam – figures like Pham Le Thao Nguyen or emerging talents – need a properly built opening foundation, not packaged products with over-easy promises. They need to understand why a move is played, not just how to play it. That is the difference between a course and a shortcut.

There is a truth that instructional-product makers often avoid: no opening can compensate for a lack of middlegame understanding. The Scandinavian may carry you through the first 15 moves, but from move 16 onward, you must think for yourself. And that is precisely where the product ends and your game begins.

Over the years of covering chess events, I have watched many young players fall into the trap of over-promising products. They buy this course and that course, accumulate hundreds of hours of video, yet never spend enough time sitting at the board analysing on their own. They know the name of every opening, but understand the essence of none.

In a sense, this product reflects a larger trend in modern chess: the commercialisation of knowledge. Opening knowledge – once transmitted through books, coaches and years of accumulation – is now packaged into short, convenient products sold with promises of fast results. It has an upside: it democratises chess learning, opening it to more people. But it also has a downside: it creates distorted expectations about what learning chess actually requires.

The irony is that precisely because the Scandinavian is an "easy" opening, it is hard to play correctly. When you do not need to memorise many variations, you must understand the structures deeply. When you cannot lean on theory, you must lean on judgement. And judgement – the hardest thing to teach in chess – cannot be conveyed in 60 minutes.

The product sells you the idea of simplicity. But simplicity in the opening does not mean simplicity on the board. After the queens come off, the position becomes quieter, but not easier to understand. White has space, Black has structure. Whoever plays the middlegame better wins. In other words: the Scandinavian does not give you a shortcut. It gives you a different road – and every road requires careful steps.

The empty hallway of 2026 taught me that the pitch never dies, it only waits. So does the chessboard. No opening dies. No system goes out of date. Only players stop thinking.

What this product does not tell you is this: to play the Scandinavian well, you need more than 60 minutes. You need hundreds of games, thousands of hours of analysis, and a mindset forged through defeat. The name Bent Larsen on the cover honours the past, but it also distracts. Larsen played unusual openings because he understood chess at a different level. He did not need a product teaching someone to play the Scandinavian in 60 minutes. He needed a mindset – and that mindset takes a lifetime to build.

That day I sat in the stands, never knowing I would step onto the pitch through words. But I knew one thing: chess players, like footballers, deserve to be respected with truth, not with promises.

This product can be useful. It can save you time. But it cannot think for you. And in chess, thinking is the only thing no one can package and sell. Every time you sit at the board, you are writing your own story – not Carlsen's, not Larsen's, but yours. And that story, no product can write for you.