Kenneth Rogoff: uncertainty

Transcript context

…What were your impressions of Bobby Fischer when you met him? He was amazing, first of all. When I met him, he came every day to the 1969 US Junior Championship over 10 days. He sat and he analyzed with us. The first thing was just, “What’s he doing with us? Why is he wasting his time with us?” We just thought he was so generous. Obviously, his absolute intensity, his commitment. I don’t know if you remember, it’s hard to imagine, but he actually used to be weak at rook endings, weak for somebody like that. He locked himself in a room for three months and did nothing but study rook endings and got to be very good. He told us about it. Got a hotel room with no view. Certainly, some of the ideas he showed, I still think about. I won a game, and he went over it with me, against Steve Spencer. It was the last game of the tournament, which I won. He showed me his ideas. I was like, “I hadn’t thought of any of them.” It was just his fertile . . . I don’t know if they were better — to be completely honest — than what I played. Of course, he’s much better than me. Just the imagination of there was this, and we’re talking about on move four, on move five, just things that wouldn’t occur to me. Part of the Fischer legend was that, at least supposedly, he was the greatest over-the-board analyst of any chess player.…

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