Robert Hess, who interned at [Fortress] in 2008 and will attend Yale University in August, will try to see the future over the next seven days -- on a chessboard. The 19-year-old grandmaster is alone atop his group in the first phase of the 2011 U.S. Championship in St. Louis, and has clinched a spot in the semifinals. In five months, he plans to use his chess skills to help study finance at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, and join the likes of Harvard University economics professor Ken Rogoff as grandmasters to attend the university. “These are the kinds of things that I like doing, strategizing and finding patterns,” Hess said in a telephone interview from St. Louis. Hess, who deferred from Yale for a year to play chess full time, worked a summer internship at Fortress. There, Hess analyzed entertainment stocks and developed an interest in finance. [Bloomberg via BI]