From: pad8499a@ritvax.isc.rit.edu (Phil Dorsey)
Subject: Re: 2267 rating for ten year old
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 17:23:40 GMT

In article <1isr44$o54@agate.berkeley.edu> jeff@emily10.Berkeley.EDU 
(Jeffrey C. Ely) writes:
> >In article <1993Jan8.162506.8497@galileo.physics.arizona.edu> 
seh@neutron.physics.arizona.edu (Steven E. Hoell) writes:
> >>>Here is a list of players by age and their ratings from USCF rating
> >>>supplements. I've only listed the top rated in each age group. - Bill 
Wall
> >>
> >>>Name         AGE     RATING  YEAR
> >>
> >>...             ..      ....    ....
> >>
> >>>WINSTON,P      14      2200    1972  (master at age 14 years, 3 
months)
> >>>ROGOFF         14      2200    1967  (master at age 14 years, 8 
months)
> >>
> >>What ever happened to these folks? Did they get real jobs or something?
> >>I remember watching Rogoff at the 1975 U.S. Championship, where his
> >>2nd place finish qualified him for the Interzonal.
> 
> It depends what you call a serious job.  Ken Rogoff is now a Professor of
> Economics.  I had the great fortune of taking both of my first year
> courses in macroeconomics from Ken here at Berkeley. He is an extremely
> friendly person and an outstanding lecturer. He claims to have left 
> chess for good, but fellow students have caught him playing against his 
> computer in his ofice. :)  He told me that he wrote an article in Chess 
Life
> explaining his decision to quit chess, but I have never read it.  He has 
> since gone to Princeton.
> 
> Jeff Ely

I have heard that at some point along the way Ken was teaching at a school 
in the midwest (Minnesota or Wisconsin) where another former Rochesterian, 
sometime Senior Master Robert Joynt was also on the faculty.  I'll bet he 
played some chess there too.

Back in 1975 Ken gave an excellent talk at the Rochester Chess Club about 
Bobby Fischer and discussed one of his chess games, surprising those who 
thought of him as a quiet person.  Ken was always known as a polite 
person.  He was also an intense student of chess, reading over every game 
in every Informant when he was playing actively.  I visited him briefly 
while he was preparing to play Tarjan in the 1975 US Championship in 
Oberlin.  I think Jon Tisdall (then of Syracuse) was there helping Ken 
along with Kim Commons (who played Ken in the first round of the 
tournament).  Ken would try out variations in the Caro-Kann (which he 
started playing in that tournament) and Commons would defend for Black.  
"You're such a calm defender!" Ken would say as Kim would wriggle out of 
seemingly hopeless positions.

Ken was disappointed when Robert Byrne published only one of his games 
from that tournament, his one loss to William Lombardy.

I also was one of three people sharing a room at the 1974 World Open with 
Ken.  When I was doing poorly in the Booster section I asked Ken if he had 
ever had a bad tournament result that made him feel like giving up chess.  
I hoped to hear that even the great Rogoff had been through an experience 
similar to my own in his early days.

He said yes, he had been through such experience and related the story 
about when he failed to win the World Junior Championship.  It was a 
tragic story in which he lost his last five games as I recall, but somehow 
the thought of finishing "only" in second place in the World Junior wasn't 
the kind of a story I could identify with and only made me feel worse.

My brief acquaintance with Peter Winston in tournament play demonstrated 
that he was also a polite and friendly chess master.  I was paired with 
Peter in the first round of the 1975 Lake Ontario Open and after a few 
minutes I realized that I had just been paired with a reigning US Junior 
Co-Champion who represented the United States at the World Junior 
Championship and whose picture had recently been published in CHESS LIFE.  
I took a walk before the game and tried to imagine some scenario whereby I 
could win the game.  The only scenario I could imagine was that Peter 
might fall into a particular opening trap that I knew.  When I sat down to 
play him he had with him a copy of a book to read during the game.  I 
believe it was called THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.

I don't think this was a ploy to unnerve me  he just didn't expect to 
have any trouble knocking off his lower rated opponent, and for good 
reason.  However, he walked right into the opening trap I had imagined 
playing before the game ever started.  Actually it wasn't a very good trap 
and he might have won the game anyway if he hadn't compounded his error by 
losing his Queen.  I was almost ashamed to beat such a strong player in 
this way and could hardly look him in the face after the game, although he 
always said hello to me when he saw me at another tournament.

Peter's rating dropped into Class A a few months later but years later I 
saw games he played with top level players in an article on the Kopec
opening so I believe that he recovered his master title.  Then, after
doing that, I guess he disappeared from chess.

If anyone has information about where Peter Winston is now I would like to 
know too.

Getting back to my story, later in 1975 I saw Ken Rogoff and he mentioned 
that he'd heard of my win over "Swinston" as he called him (I can only 
guess that Peter must have had a reputation as a "swindler").  I told Ken 
that Peter fell for an opening trap.  Ken looked a bit disappointed.

As for my games with Ken, I never played him in tournaments.  I have lost 
to Ken many times in speed chess (even with Ken spotting me time on the 
clock) but I did manage to score the only win in a 25 or 30 board simul 
that Ken played in 1975 in Rochester.  No opening trap this time.  I won a 
pawn with some tactical shot and converted it into a won endgame.

Phil Dorsey
Rochester Institute of Technology
American Video Institute
Interactive Media Laboratory