Finding his match in Detroit

Across the board
A Brazilian chess master finds his match in Detroit
by Samantha Cleaver3/12/2008

Silvio Cunha Pereira rests his forearms on the wobbly brown table and squints at the plastic blue-and-white chessboard in front of him. The clock is ticking. Five seconds. Four. Three.

Whiffs of fresh McDonald’s french fries float through the Wayne State University Student Center. Behind Pereira, college students hurry past, their heels clicking on the tile. Sitting across the table, Vester Wilson, hunched over in a super bright, nearly neon-green sweatshirt, watches the 50-year-old Pereira examine the board. The clock blinks: 0:00 0:00. Pereira shakes his head. With one hand, he scoops up the remaining pieces, a king, a few pawns and a castle, and hands them over to Wilson with a grudging smile. The spectators, men in sweatshirts sitting at surrounding tables or leaning against covered garbage bins, chewing hamburgers and gnawing on chicken wings, laugh. There was nothing more Pereira could do with a few seconds on the clock and just a castle to fight with, they agree. Wilson wins the game by default — his clock still has a few seconds left.

The pair, Pereira, with wispy blond hair, dressed in a black-and-red Cosby-style sweater with the sleeves rolled up, and Wilson, wearing a blue stocking cap pulled down over his bald head, black mustache over a pursed lip, set up their pieces and start the clock again: 3:00 each. The two come to WSU’s Student Center often to play with an informal chess club that has met every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for more than a decade. They play speed games, with just a few minutes on the clock. It’s more emotional that way, Pereira says, and, you get more games in. In 30 minutes, Pereira and Wilson play six fast, methodical games.

Portrait of a chess master

Pereira fell in love with chess when he was 13, living in his hometown of Osasco, Brazil, outside of São Paolo. “I went to a club near my school and saw a guy playing 10 to 15 people at the same time,” he remembers. Transfixed, Pereira challenged anyone and everyone to a game, studied chess theory and played in tournaments. By the time he was 16, he placed sixth in Brazil’s national championship tournament and played professionally after school. He earned a degree in civil engineering, but never used it — chess won out. Now, 37 years later, he’s the four-time champion of the Open Games in São Paolo, five-time champion of the Brazilian Team Championship, and second-place winner at the Michigan Quick Championship in December, which is one part of the weekend-long Motor City Open. His World Chess Federation rating is 2286, which puts him just below to the Top 100. (The top rating in 2007 was 2799, held by Vladimir Kramnik from Russia.) All the while, his game has become more aggressive (he’ll readily sacrifice pieces to get ahead) and more creative, but calm confidence presides.

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