Henrique Mecking

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Henrique Mecking (born 23 January 1952; first name spelled Enrique in some references, also known as "Mequinho" in Brazil) was a leading Brazilian chess master in the 1970s. He was a very strong player at an early age (see sample game below), drawing comparisons to Bobby Fischer, although he did not achieve the International Grandmaster title until 1971. His highest FIDE (International Chess Federation) rating was 2635, achieved in 1977, when he was rated as the third best player on that year's rating list, behind Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. He was the first Brazilian to reach the rank of Grandmaster and is considered possibly the best South American player ever, at least until the rise of the Peruvian grandmaster Julio Ernesto Granda Zúñiga.

Despite winning his first national championship at the age of 13, he played in very few tournaments. He won at Vrsac in 1971 and finished third with Robert Byrne (after Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi) at Hastings in 1971/2. In 1975, he twice shared second place behind Ljubomir Ljubojevic, firstly at Las Palmas with Ulf Andersson and Mikhail Tal and then at Manila with Lev Polugaevsky, Bent Larsen and Helmut Pfleger.

Mecking was however a regular participant in FIDE events to choose a challenger for the World Chess Championship. After unsuccessful attempts to qualify from the Interzonals of Sousse 1967 and Palma de Mallorca 1970, he had his first major triumph in 1973, when he won at the Petrópolis Interzonal (ahead of a very strong field that included such chess luminaries as Paul Keres, David Bronstein, etc). He was subsequently eliminated from the Candidates Tournament in the quarterfinals, through losing his match against Korchnoi.

At his next attempt in 1976, he won the Manila Interzonal (ahead of Vlastimil Hort, Lev Polugaevsky, Vitaly Tseshkovsky, Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Zoltan Ribli etc.), thereby reaching a second successive Candidates match stage, but again lost in the quarterfinals, this time to Polugaevsky. Illness, believed to be myasthenia gravis, curtailed his participation in the following Candidates process in 1979, and indeed was so severe as to impair his international career through the 1980s. While he was able to recover and to resume his chess career in 1991 with matches against Predrag Nikolić and (in 1992) Yasser Seirawan, followed by intermittent tournament appearances, his chance at the world title had passed and he did not reach the Candidates matches again.

A game from Mecking's first Interzonal, played when he was only 15 years old: Mecking-Aivars Gipslis, Sousse Interzonal 1967, Bogo-Indian Defense: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Bb4+ 4.Bd2 Qe7 5.e3 Bxd2+ 6.Qxd2 c5 7.Be2 b6 8.Nc3 O-O 9.O-O Bb7 10.d5 exd5 11.cxd5 d6 12.Rad1 a6 13.a4 Nbd7 14.Qc2 Rfe8 15.Rfe1 g6 16.e4 Rab8 17.Nd2 Bc8 18.f4 Nf8 19.Nc4 b5 20.axb5 axb5 21.Na5 Bd7 22.Nc6 Bxc6 23.dxc6 c4 24.Bf3 Ne6 25.e5 dxe5 26.fxe5 b4 27.exf6 Qc5+ 28.Qf2 Qxf2+ 29.Kxf2 bxc3 30.bxc3 Kf8 31.Rd7 Rb5 32.Bg4 Rc5 33.Bxe6 fxe6 34.c7 1-0