Chess Where I lived - Ep. 3: Brazil. A Rising Rocket Towards The Goal
Hello again everyone,
A warm welcome to what now is already the third episode of the series "Chess Where I Lived". The country of this month is Brazil, the largest territory in South America and one of the most beautiful places in the world in terms of natural beauty, where I had the privilege and luck to live in 2017 and 2018. Maybe my second favorite in the world, but I am still deciding.
The city where I lived is called Belo Horizonte, located in the southeast. Again, I want to make it clear that my personal opinion, be it about chess or the country in general, does not necessarily represent the thoughts of every Brazilian. I would also like to emphasize that such a large area will obviously have many cultural differences depending on which region we are talking about, so please read with that in mind.
In case you haven't read the first two episodes, go do it now! No, just kidding, please stay here and do it later if you like this one. Anyway, I will explain the main idea again, which is to first give some information about the history of chess there, along with some notable players and curious facts. The aim is to spread the information and to let more people know about the countries I have in my heart, as a tribute to them. Then, in a short conclusion, I will tell you more about my personal perspective regarding the popularity of the game there. The texts are standardized and divided into five topics:
- A historical player
- The GOAT
- My favorite
- A curious fact
- My personal perspective
The referee blows the whistle, and the match begins! 90 minutes of pure emotion. No, I am joking again, the text will not be that long, that was just an obvious reference.
1) A historical player: Octávio Trompowsky
Although his surname suggests otherwise, Octávio Figueira Trompowsky de Almeida was born in Rio de Janeiro on November 30, 1897. He has represented Brazil in two chess Olympiads. In one of them, held in Buenos Aires in 1939, Trompowsky played against the legendary world champions Alexander Alekhine, against whom he was able to earn a draw, and José Raúl Capablanca, being the last opponent of the Cuban grandmaster in an Olympiad.
In the same year, he became for the first and only time the Brazilian National Champion, when the tournament was still in its 9th edition. However, despite being among the best national players of his time, he was not the strongest, being slightly behind other great names such as Souza Mendes and Walter Cruz. So why did I decide to mention him in this text?
Because Trompowsky is best known as the player after whom the Trompowsky Attack (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5) chess opening was named. If you've heard of this opening, you probably didn't know that its creator was Brazilian, nor would you have guessed it from its name. His playing style was innovative, and he always tried to break away from traditional theories and repertoire whenever possible. The creation of this unorthodox line reinforces this fact.
The main idea of White's second move is simple: to exchange the opponent's knight on f6 for the bishop, forcing Black to work with doubled pawns on the f-column. Of course, Black is not forced to accept this and can play many moves against it, such as Ne4, e6, or d5, in order to gain control of the center.
The Trompowsky Attack may not be the most popular opening choice of grandmasters, but it certainly has its value and cannot be considered inferior. Proof of this is that Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen have used it in classic and very important matches. Carlsen even played it in his first game in the World Championship match against Karjakin in 2016.
To be such an innovative player and to immortalize his name and legacy with an opening that is still widely played today, is certainly enough to be mentioned here as someone very important for Brazilian chess history.
Trompowsky died in Rio de Janeiro on March 26, 1984, at the age of 86.
2) The GOAT: Henrique Mecking
Henrique da Costa Mecking, also known as Mequinho, was born in Santa Cruz do Sul on January 23, 1952. Considered a child prodigy, he was even compared to Bobby Fischer at an early age and became the Brazilian National Champion for the first time in 1965, at the age of 13.
He was crowned National Champion again in 1967 and was also the first Brazilian to receive the title of Grandmaster in 1972, when such an honor was much harder to achieve than it is today. He played for Brazil in the Chess Olympiads of 1968, 1974, 2002, and 2004.
The national chess community is basically unanimous that he is the best Brazilian player of all time, and frankly, it is almost impossible to disagree. Despite practicing a sport that was not popular at all before him, Mequinho became a star in the country and was even mentioned in popular songs of the time. At his peak in the 1970s, he won two Interzonals, which at the time were worth a spot in the Candidates Tournament.
The first was the 1973 Interzonal in Petropolis, Brazil, where he finished ahead of legends such as Paul Keres and David Bronstein. He then went on to reach the quarterfinals of the Candidates, when the tournament was still played in a knockout format, and was eliminated only after losing his match against Viktor Korchnoi.
Three years later, in 1976, he won the Interzonal in Manila, Philippines, ahead of names like Polugaevsky and Ljubojević, thus reaching the Candidates stage for the second time in a row. Again, he reached the quarterfinals and this time lost to Polugaevsky.
His highest FIDE rating was 2635 (please take rating inflation into account), which he achieved in 1977, placing him 3rd in the world behind Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. Mequinho was therefore considered a genuine contender for the World Championship in the mid-1970s.
However, his chess career was interrupted by a serious illness called myasthenia gravis, which forced him to withdraw from the Interzonal 1979 in Rio de Janeiro. His illness was so serious that it was widely believed that he could soon die. But fortunately for us all, he survived and still occasionally plays chess tournaments in Brazil, having the respect and admiration of all his colleagues and fans.
3) My favorite: Rafael Leitão
If you read my blog often, this will not come as a surprise to you. Rafael Duailibe Leitão was born in São Luís on December 28, 1979. He is a seven-time Brazilian champion, winning the first in 1996 and the last in 2014, tying the national record with Souza Mendes, Jaime Sunye, and Giovanni Vescovi. Leitão also played for Brazil in nine Chess Olympiads, between 1996 and 2018. At the 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin in 2006, he won the silver medal on board three.
Rafael started playing chess when he was six and showed a talent for the game from a very young age, winning the U10 Brazilian Junior Championship in 1989, at the age of 9. But the greatest glories were yet to come.
In 1991, in Warsaw, Poland, he was crowned World Youth Champion in the U12 category, ahead of the famous Hungarian player Peter Leko. Five years later, in Menorca, Spain, he won the title again, this time in the U18 category, ahead of Giovanni Vescovi, one of his main Brazilian rivals on the board. To this day, he is the only Brazilian player ever to have been crowned FIDE World Champion.
His International Master title was earned in 1995 after winning the Pan-American Youth Championship in Santiago, Chile. Three years later, in 1998, at the age of 18, he became the youngest Brazilian to earn the Grandmaster title, and the first GM born in the Northeast region of the country.
Leitão represented Brazil three times in the FIDE World Championship and another four times in the FIDE World Cup, achieving his best position in New Delhi 2000, when he reached the fourth round and finished among the top 16 in the world. In June 2014 he reached a rating of 2652, the highest of his career.
The reason why he is my favorite player is explained in detail in the text "My Top 5 Favorite Chess Players". So, just to give a short summary, it has mainly to do with the fact that he was the first Brazilian player I got to know; his very good sense of humor while analyzing games on his YouTube channel; and now mainly because he often participates here in my blog with his wise and sometimes polemical comments.
4) A curious fact: Luis Paulo Supi and the sacrifice that left Carlsen perplexed.
Did you know that one of the most amazing moves ever played against Magnus Carlsen was made by a Brazilian? His name is Luis Paulo Supi, and he was born in Catanduva on October 10, 1996.
Let me first summarize his ongoing career before we get to the really important stuff. Supi started playing chess when he was five years old and became a Grandmaster in 2018 at the age of 22, being the 14th Brazilian player to achieve this title. Today he is one of the best active players in the country, with an ELO rating close to 2600, and is the current Brazilian National Champion, which he won for the first time in 2021 and for the second time in 2023.
Supi has also represented Brazil in the 2018 and 2022 Olympiads, played in the Tata Steel Challengers division in early 2023, where he finished seventh, and participated in the 2023 Chess World Cup, where he reached the second round before being defeated by Chinese GM Wei Yi.
Besides being a very strong over-the-board player, he is also known for his amazing skills in online blitz games. The famous streamer Hikaru Nakamura has even unfairly accused him of cheating a few years ago after being defeated in a match. Little did he know that some years later, one of his greatest rivals would once again suffer at the hands of Supi, but this time with a much better reaction.
So, the game in which the move I am talking about happened was not really that important, since it was just a casual online blitz in which both players were having fun. Nevertheless, Carlsen's reaction to the move 18. Qc6!! is nice and funny to watch, as he is shocked and at the same time seems to be amazed by the tactical idea. My impression is that he found it so beautiful and impressive that he didn't even get upset about losing.
Below is a video of the game and Carlsen's reaction. It is not too long, but if you don't want to watch the whole game, the moment of the queen sacrifice comes at 3:25. The idea is to control the d7 square and prevent the king's escape. There is no way for Black to avoid checkmate.
5) My personal perspective
Well, in general, chess cannot yet be considered that popular in Brazil, and it is far behind football. Nevertheless, the feeling I had while living there was that the people who liked the game seemed to know a lot about it. As a result, it was only in Brazil that my enthusiasm for chess was rekindled, something that did not happen even in Germany, a country with much more tradition.
I was impressed by how some of them knew very well the history of chess, great players, and even historical matches. Of course, this can be just a coincidence and maybe I was lucky to meet addicted friends who even introduced me to some of the famous players like the aforementioned Mecking, Leitão, and Supi, but also others like Krikor Mekhitarian, Alexandr Fier, and Juliana Terao.
After returning to New Zealand at the end of 2018, I kept in touch with many of them and also made some new Brazilian friends on this website. As far as I know, there has been a huge boom in chess popularity in recent years, driven by many different reasons.
One of them was the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to it worldwide. The Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" also played a very important role and got a lot of people interested in learning the rules and the basics.
But I want to take this opportunity to mention that two particular YouTube channels seem to have made chess in Brazil reach higher flights than ever before. Rafael Leite, the owner of the channel "Xadrez Brasil", and Rafael Santos, who runs "Raffael Chess", are doing a fantastic job in bringing more lovers to our side.
Amazingly, they influence all kinds of people, from young children having their first contact with chess, to experienced adults who played it in their youth and, like me, have had their passion revived. Someone has to investigate the relationship between the name Rafael and the chess talent, it cannot be a coincidence.
That is why I strongly believe that Brazil, like India, will have a large number of great young players in a few years, and I am keeping my fingers crossed. It depends on many factors, of course, but passion is the most important, and they have plenty of that.
Special thanks to @GMRafpig for helping me with this text, especially with the topic about himself.
Postscript:
[Well, let’s go to the part where I explain why I chose to represent Brazil with bishops. Basically, I am referring to the huge influence of the Catholic Church in the country, which was brought by the Portuguese colonizers in 1500. Brazil is one of the most religious countries in South America, so I think bishops represent it well. In addition, the bishop pair, one for the white and one for the black squares, reminds both of cooperation and diversity, other aspects that are very present in Brazilian society.
Now, if you have been patient enough to read to the end, your reward will be my honesty. Everything in the paragraph above is bullshit and I chose the bishops because the knight is reserved for Spain, so it was the only piece that was left.]
