Ken Rogoff

Kenneth Saul Rogoff was born in Rochester, New York on March 22, 1953. He is a chess grandmaster (1978) who gave up chess to become the chief economist at the World Bank, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and was a professor at Berkeley, Wisconsin, and Princeton. Dr. Rogoff is currently the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Ken learned chess from his father at the age of 6. He was a chess master and winner of the New York State Open at the age of 14 in 1967. He became a chess master in November, 1967 at the age of 14 years and 8 months.

In 1968, at age 15, he took 2^nd in the Canadian Open, behind Bent Larsen. He was also giving blindfold simultaneous exhibitions and was playing as many as 26 players blindfolded.

He won the U.S. Junior Championship three times (1969, 1970, 1971). He was the first Junior Champion to successfully defend his title.

In August 1969, he played in the World Junior Championship in Stockholm (won by Karpov). One of his games, against Arthur Williams of the UK, lasted 221 moves, one of the longest games ever played (the longest game is 269 moves), according to Rogoff. The game was a draw. The first capture (a pawn) was on move 94. All the moves of this game has not been found, however. Only the first 106 moves are known. Rogoff then lost his last five games in the event.

In 1970 he played Board 1 on the U.S. student team that captured 1^st place in the 17^th Annual World Student Team Championship, held in Haifa, Israel.

Rogoff took 3^rd place (behind Hug and Ribli) in the 1971 World Junior Championship in Athens.

In 1972, Ken played board 1 on the US team in the World Student Team championship, held in Graz. During this event, Rogoff was playing grandmaster Rober Huebner. Huebner played one move and offered a draw to Rogoff. Rogoff accepted. However, the arbiters insisted that some moves be played, so the players played a ridiculous game in 12 moves, then agreed to a draw. The arbiters ruled that both players must apologize and play an actual game later in the evening. Rogoff appeared at 7 p.m. and alologized. Huebenr did not show up and did not apologize. Huebner’s clock was started, and after an hour, Rogoff was declared the winner.

In 1974, he was awarded the title of International Master.

Rogoff played in three U.S. Championships (1974, 1975, 1978) and took 2^nd place in the 1975 US Championship (won by Walter Browne).

In 1976, he played in the Interzonal Tournament in Biel, Switzerland (won by Larsen). He was the youngest player in the event. He finished tied for 13^th-15^th, scoring 9 out of 19.

In 1978, he was awarded the title of International Grandmaster at the general assembly of FIDE in Buenos Aires. He may not have satisfied the norm requirements for a GM title, but he argued that his performance in the U.S. Championship proved he was GM strength. He was the 13^th American player to become a grandmaster.

In 1980, Rogoff played 1^st board on the Washington Plumbers teeam that won the National League Championship. He was ranked 13^th in the nation with a 2522 USCF rating.

Rogoff has played just over 300 tournament games in his lifetime, a small number for a grandmaster.

He has a PhD from MIT in Economics. He had gone to Yale (B.A. summa cum laude in 1975 majoring in Russian Economics) and MIT, and dropped out of MIT to play chess. In 1978 he quit competitive chess and earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 1980 form MIT.

Rogoff said that chess helped him learn economics and that the whole logic of game theory, which is a big part of economics, came easily to him. He said that chess helped him think about what the other person was thinking, and that helped him in his career when he was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.

Rogoff said he stopped playing competitive chess in 1980 because he found it too demanding to balance his chess schedule and his studies. He said, “First, I wanted to do something more important with my life. Second, I thought I was traveling too much playing chess. Third, I wanted to have a better social life.” Later, he said, “I could have had a perfectly reasonable life in chess.”

In 2008, Ken was an economics advisor to Senator John McCain (but is McCain listening?). He met McCain at an economics conference a few years ago. In the months before the current financial crisis, Ken gave speeches and wrote articles about the financial system in the U.S. He said it was inevitable, even necessary, that some big banks would fail.

When asked if he would be an economics advisor in the White House if McCain won the presidential election, Rogoff said he wasn’t sure he would fit in at the White House. “I am way too much of a maverick.”

Dr. Rogoff is married to Natasha Susan Lance, the exeutive producer of “Sesame Street” for Russia.