Patrick Gideon Wolff (born February 15, 1968) is an American

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

Grandmaster. He is the son of philosopher

Robert Paul Wolff Robert Paul Wolff (born December 27, 1933) is an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wolff has written widely on topics in political philosophy such as Marxism, tolerance (against ...

and brother of law professor

Tobias Barrington Wolff Tobias Barrington Wolff (born 1970) is a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School where he teaches classes on sexuality and the law, same sex marriage and human rights. He is known for his legal advocacy on same sex marriage and ...

. Wolff won the

United States Chess Championship The U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational tournament held to determine the United States chess champion. Begun as a challenge match in 1845, the U.S. Championship has been decided by tournament play for most of its long history. Since 1936, ...

in 1992 and 1995.

Chess career

In addition to his two United States championships (1992 and 1995), Wolff also had a distinguished scholastic chess career, winning the 1983 National High School Championship and the 1987 U.S. Junior Championship. In 1988, in a game played in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, Wolff defeated the world champion

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...

during a

simultaneous exhibition A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition (commonly chess or Go) in which one player (typically of high rank, such as a grandmaster or dan-level player) plays multiple games at a time with a number of other pl ...

in just 25 moves with the black pieces:

1.c4 e5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 c6 4.d4 exd4 5.Qxd4 d5 6.cxd5 cxd5 7.Nf3 Nc6 8.Qa4 Be7 9.0-0 0-0 10.Be3 Ng4 11.Bd4 Nxd4 12.Nxd4 Qb6 13.Nc3 Qh6 14.h4 g5 15.Nxd5 Bd8 16.Rac1 gxh4 17.Rxc8 hxg3 18.Nf3 Nh2 19.Rfc1 Rxc8 20.Rxc8 Nxf3+ 21.exf3 gxf2+ 22.Kf1 Qd2 23.Nf6+ Kg7 24.Ne8+ Kh8 25.Qe4 Bh4 0–1

This game, although played as part of a simultaneous exhibition against five other masters, was one of Kasparov's shortest losses in his career. In 1995, the same year he won his second United States championship, Wolff served as a

second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ea ...

to challenger

Viswanathan Anand Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former five-time World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion. He became the first grandmaster from India in 1988, and is one of the few players to have ...

in preparation for the

Classical World Chess Championship 1995 The Classical World Chess Championship 1995, known at the time as the PCA World Chess Championship 1995, was held from September 10, 1995, to October 16, 1995, on the 107th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Garry ...

match against champion Kasparov. Although Anand led the match after nine games, Kasparov eventually prevailed 10.5 to 7.5. Wolff is also the author of the ''Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess''. He graduated from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...

in 1996, and the trophy of the annual Harvard-Yale intercollegiate chess match is named the Wolff Cup in his honor, as he remains the only grandmaster to participate in the match as a member of both colleges (beginning at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

and graduating from Harvard). Wolff'
game
against

Vassily Ivanchuk Vasyl Mykhaylovych Ivanchuk ( uk, Василь Михайлович Іванчук; born March 18, 1969), also transliterated as Vassily Ivanchuk, is a Ukrainian chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1988. A leading ...

from the Biel Invitational in 1993 was featured in the 2020 Netflix limited series,

The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) ''The Queen's Gambit'' is a 2020 American coming-of-age period drama streaming television miniseries based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The title refers to the "Queen's Gambit", a chess opening. The series was written an ...

. Kasparov, who acted as a chess consultant for the series, selected and modified the 1993 game to serve as the game played during the series' climax.

Investing career

Wolff was previously a managing director at

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

hedge fund Clarium, a $3B global macro hedge fund. He left Clarium to launch Grandmaster Capital Management, a hedge fund that received seed capital from

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in F ...

, the founder of Clarium and a strong chess player himself. Hedge Fund Alert reported that Wolff started the wind-down process of Grandmaster Capital in June 2015. Over the past several years, Wolff has given a blindfolded simultaneous exhibition for all comers at the annual

Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiu ...

shareholder meeting in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest ...

headed by CEO

Warren Buffett Warren Edward Buffett ( ; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net ...

and Vice-Chairman

Charlie Munger Charles Thomas Munger (born January 1, 1924) is an American billionaire investor, businessman, and former real estate attorney. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; Buffett has described Mung ...

Personal life

While originally from the Boston area, Wolff currently resides in San Francisco.Rodriguez, Olga and Har, Janie (December 12, 2021
San Francisco's Vaunted Tolerance Dims Amid Brazen Crimes
''AP News''. Retrieved December 12, 2021.

References

External links

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Kasparov vs Wolff, 0-1 (requires Java plugin)

"American Gambit: Kasparov vs US Juniors"
Chessbase News, 13 April 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Wolff, Patrick 1968 births 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews American chess players Chess grandmasters Harvard College alumni Jewish chess players Living people