Bent played it successfully, but all his efforts were overshadowed by his famous defeat against Spassky in 17 moves at the match USSR vs. Rest of the World in Belgrade.
It's an odd role, given that he spent the 1980s and '90s buttering up chief executives on CNN, but he's now playing it very successfully.
"The military is like the matador with the red cape attracting the bull of resentment against the corruption of the old regime," he said, "and they are playing it very successfully".
For a man who loves ODI cricket and has played it very successfully, the task of leading England to a World Cup is a wonderful opportunity.
It's almost certain that the Philharmonia had never tackled it before, but the orchestra played it superbly, with Salonen successfully toning down its brassier excesses, if never quite making the whole thing convincing.
G4TV commented that the gameplay was well suited for portable play and that it successfully combined card battles and random dungeons, "two much-maligned RPG" elements.
Popular and jazz standards and Jackson songs were also part of its repertoire; in the 1980s it played, less successfully, arrangements of Duke Ellington compositions.
Brothers, starring Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal, didn't quite win the reviews to perform as a critically driven specialist title, but nor did it have the commercial punch to play successfully in the mainstream – it landed uncomfortably in the middle, with £366,000 from 214 cinemas.
There is no reason why he can't play 12 successfully.
At Villa he scored more than 20 Premier League goals between 1991 and 1995 before going on to play less successfully for teams including the Turkish side Fenerbahçe and Manchester City.
