Did you guess who annotated Rogoff-Spencer 1969?

Bobby Fischer on Ken Rogoff

In our previous article Ken Rogoff: economist and chess player we told you how Rogoff, at sixteen, was the youngest player ever to win the United States Junior, an event in which the eight highest rated players under twenty years of age competed. Among the interested spectators and analysts was Grandmaster Robert Fischer, who felt that Rogoff had great future potential. Fischer wrote the following article for a popular youth magazine.

The October 1969 issue of Boys' Life ("For all boys") cost 40 cents

Pages 8 + 10 contained an article by Bobby Fischer on the US Junior Championship 1969 [Click to enlarge]

By Bobby Fischer

The other day I dropped over to the U.S. Junior Championship at the McAlpin Hotel in New York City and saw some very talented young players in action, struggling for the title. It brought back memories of years ago when I used to be in those events. The player that impressed me most was 16-year-old Ken Rogoff from Rochester, N.Y. What I liked best about Ken – who won the championship – was his self-assured style and his knowing exactly what he wanted over the chessboard. I'm told he's only been playing chess two or three years and it should encourage each of you young fellows who read this column to know that by applying yourself, as Ken did, you can become a fine player in a relatively short time, too.

Incidentally, it might also be interesting to note that Ken drew a game with Bent Larsen in the summer of '68 when Larsen was playing in the U.S. Open championship. Larsen is considered one of the very best players in the world today.

In this game that I'm going to briefly outline, Ken clinched the first prize in the last round of the Junior Championship tournament. Ken plays white against 19-year-old Steve Spencer from Berkley, Calif.

Now for some tips that I think will be useful to you.

• Don't "turn off" your mind when it's your opponent's turn to move. Use this time to think ahead to your next possible move. And when he does move, always ask yourself, "Why did he make this particular move?" before you do anything else.

• Try to control an open file with your rooks, especially when there is only one open file.

• Don't give up in the middle of the game if you don't think you're doing well – or even if you're in big trouble. There's always the chance that you'll have a flash of brilliance or that your opponent might slip up. Chess is a kaleidoscope – it's ever changing – and opportunities suddenly appear.

• Don't be discouraged if you are black and think that you're automatically going to lose. With black you have the advantage of not having to show your hand first, and you can play a defense of your own choosing – preferably one you're familiar with.

• When you have free time, study the game of chess. A good book to look at is Larry Evans's Beginner to Expert (Lee Publications, about five dollars). In it, Evans showsyou the basic moves. He explains the various forces that decide chess games, and shows how to win in the end games. He provides a lot of one-and two-move checkmate puzzles to sharpen your finishing-off techniques. One particularly interesting part of the book is when he replays one of his games and explains what was going on in his head at each move. He also provides an interesting glossary of chess terms.

You can read the full October 1969 issue of Boys' Life at Google Books. It contains lovely adverts like this:

Kenneth Rogoff is a professor public policy and economics at Harvard University and a chess grandmaster. He recently wrote a favourable review on the new Fischer movie "Pawn Sacrifice". More on Rogoff’s research, opinion pieces, and bio can be found here. He is currently working on an interesting subject: phasing out paper currency, which he began writing about 20 years ago.