Wrapping up Bento Goncalves

Yesterday was a day for a little bit of chess, but a lot more camaraderie. First the chess played out its due course, though as the coaches had forewarned, most of the results had been cast the previous day. Tommy sailed on to his Gold medal, to give us all something to cheer loudly at the Closing Ceremony, Evan won her game to be our top scorer with 8 points out of 9, yet incredibly had to settle for Silver, and Jonathan put behind him the tears of falling short a day earlier to get Bronze and give us a complete set. Every member of Team USA finished with a positive score. We had three 4th place finishers, Vignesh in Open U-10, Ellen in Girls U-14, and Adarsh in the Open U-16. In what was a reasonably good day for the team, the biggest heartbreak was probably Yang, who lost for the second game in a row to fall out of the medals in Girls U-18. Everyone else finished pretty much as expected, with Stuart having one of his quickest wins of the week, to finish in ninth place with 5.5 points and a tournament performance rating just over FIDE 2100. In summary, his results reflected his rating, if not the opportunities he created for himself.
Once the games were done, Team USA ventured off to a churrascaria for lunch. It was the kind of team bonding experience that you like to think in theory would be good earlier in the week, but sometimes you need shared experience of adversity to rally people together. And so it was, that when the cry went up: “Does anyone really want to eat rice and beans again?!” the whole team fell immediately into line behind Aviv, and a quickly-organized procession of five taxis took us to the nominated restaurant.
Chris’ mom organized the boys and girls onto separate tables, with the long table reserved exclusively for adults. It was quickly apparent that Aviv is a churrascaria expert and connoisseur, and capable of consuming huge amounts of meat at a frightening pace! Besides the usual array of cuts of beef, chicken, lamb, etc, we had a little more unusual fair, including rabbit and sliced chicken hearts, which Justus’ mom ordered her son not to try! I ate enough food for several days, and still felt woefully inadequate sitting next to Aviv. It was fun to unwind together.
It never fails to amaze me that these kids, whom I always expect to have had enough of xadrez (Portuguese for chess – I have learned something!) after a tournament like this, will happily finish the tournament then spend the rest of the day playing chess for fun. And so it was when we got back to the hotel – the boys and girls happily set up their boards while parents hung out, or in my case, scrambled to get some work finished. A happy buzz of relief and relaxation pervaded the lobby areas, interspersed with occasional shrieks of laughter, as other nations did similar things. A love of the game unites these children across cultures and across language barriers. As I write this now, waiting for the bus back to the airport, Stuart and Tommy are cheerfully playing again with four other boys whose nationality I don’t know, and whose nationality does not matter. I guess it is chess’ small contribution to world peace.
A question in my mind was, “where will they hold the Closing Ceremony?” No room was remotely big enough. However, not everyone is used to the amount of personal space that we have in the US, and it did not seem to be an issue that a few hundred people could fit into a room where maybe sixty had played earlier in the week. Too claustrophobic for me, I squeezed through the doorway briefly to shout for Tommy at the appointed time (I heard his name, but could not see him, of course), took a picture of the crowds, and escaped again.
After the thankfully brief melee called the Closing Ceremony, Vignesh’s father and I tried to organize a tour of the local area for this morning. I take my hat off to him for his persistence, as we tied up the one English-speaking hotel staff member for an inordinate amount of time, while she tried to find someone who could help us. The problem was that today is Father’s Day in Brazil (are you reading this Stuart?), and apparently no-one wants to work on such a day, even Jefferson, the one English-speaking driver seemingly in a thousand mile radius, who came highly recommended after taking Justus’ mom for a tour earlier in the week. The lady from the hotel went above and beyond any reasonable lengths to help us – we certainly cannot say people here have not been friendly – and eventually found someone she knew personally to take us out today.
By now the Bottomless Stomachs, a.k.a. the children, were ready to eat again, and Adarsh’s mom lead a smaller group of eight of us out to a local pizzeria. We walked past the first four to try the fifth one, and put our names down for the 15 minute wait, but this place was deemed unacceptable because it seemed to be a kind of Italian version of dim sum, rather than giving you the opportunity to order exactly what you wanted off a menu. Let me say that behind the bright smile and the slight frame, Adarsh’s mom is a lady who knows her mind, and has her standards and principles, rather like my boss at home. By the time we had worked our way back and each of the other pizza places had also been deemed unsuitable for one reason or another, I feared mutiny amongst the party, but eventually we finished the evening in the small café at the hotel, with burgers and fries for the kids, and the smallest bite of a sandwich for the grown-ups.
The parents called it a night and went off to sleep, while some of the kids continued to play blitz. It had been a long, long day, and the tournament was already a distant memory.
Steven, August 8th