Once Upon a Life

Robert Alexander Mundell, the Nobel Laureate who inspired the €uro, born October 24, 1932 in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, has died April 4, 2021 at Santa Colomba, Monteriggioni, “in his beloved Italy”, such as Brian Domitrović wrote on Forbes. Mundell was also a chess enthusiast, who could boast to have played Bobby Fischer, if only once in a lifetime and just for fun, as he recounted in an interview with Piergiorgio Odifreddi for L’Espresso, No. 10, Year 55, March 12, 2009, pp. 112-116:

— I know that you met with Bobby Fischer, who was exiled by United States for violating the embargo against Yugoslavia in 1992, and lived his final years in Iceland as somewhat of a paranoid man... — A couple of years ago I went to Iceland for a conference, and I ran into a friend of a friend of his. So we organised a meeting at my hotel. — And how did it go? — After we introduced each other, he noted we had the same name. For some reason, we immediately got along, and spent hours together in one of his favourite bars, where people left him alone. Every time I returned to Reykjavík I saw him again, often along with his wife and some friends. — What were you talking about? — I talked chess with him, and he talked economics with me. We exchanged information about our respective fields. We spent a lot of time discussing history of chess and assessing players’ strengths and weaknesses. — What were his interests in economics? — Its applications to Iceland, for example. He thought Iceland was going the wrong way, and that sooner or later it would end badly. And he was not so wrong, given that Iceland was one of the first countries to suffer from the current financial crisis, in October 2008, and one of the most strongly affected by it. A good chess player, by virtue of his rationality, also understands economics. — Have you ever played chess with Fischer? — One time. On one of my visits, I invited him, his wife and his friends to lunch at my hotel, but when they arrived, the restaurant was not yet ready. Then we went up to my suite, and I asked him if he wanted to play. He accepted. But first he asked me to tell him my Elo rating. I had to confess I didn’t have any. He played White, and made his favourite opening, the Ruy López — King’s Pawn Opening. At a certain point I took a Pawn with my Knight, and he warned me that then I’d lose a piece. I told him I knew it. I actually lost my Knight, but I gained two Pawns, emerging with a good game and threatening a check. — How did he take it? — He leaned back in his chair and said to me: “You play much better than I thought! I believed you were only a wood pusher”. Then he studied the board for a minute or two, and resumed playing. After a while his King managed to escape to the centre squares, and I remained a Pawn down, although with a slightly better position. At that moment, we were told that lunch was being served, and I gave up the game because I thought that overall his chances were better than mine. — And did he agree to it? — While eating we evaluated the pros and cons, and he concluded that he’d finally won. — Have you ever have played so-called Fischer’s chess with him, in which pieces are placed (almost) randomly at the beginning of the game? — No, but we talked about it. It seems to me an excellent idea, like shuffling a deck of cards. Starting from random arrays, creativity and talent take precedence over memorising opening theory. That would also be an excellent school of thought for economists.