When preparation meets opportunity: looking back at my first chess tournament

In case you don't know me yet, I'm Adriano Nunes Cavalcante (more known in the chess communities through my handle "AdrianoNunesFX"), a 25-year-old chess enthusiast from Brazil. I hold the titles of National Master and FIDE Candidate Master and I had quite a few other achievements in chess ever since I learned the game. Oh, and as we speak, I'm wrapping up my degree at Universidade Federal Ceará; hopefully I'll hunt down the master's degree in a year or two. We'll now go through my first chess tournament.

The event in question is the Jogos Escolares da Juventude 2017, which is essentially an Olympic event at the school level, and chess was among the sports. It happened in Brazil's capital, Brasília. It was located 2000+ km from where I lived; imagine such a trip for someone who never traveled until then! I also referred to it as "U17 nationals" in some sources, as it's simpler to understand for the English-speaking audience. I promise this will be shorter than my novels you may have read earlier! I'd even dare to say this is a prequel to all the installments so far!

NOTE #1: You can read my previous writings for Chessable here, here and here. As for my previous Lichess blog post, you can see it here. I'd also like to apologize in advance for the poor quality of some of the pictures you'll see below, I didn't have the best cameras back then.

NOTE #2: I had to remove some of the pictures in order to fit Lichess' current limit for images in blog posts, but you can see everything by clicking here.

This is how I'm gonna tell the story:

SUMMARY:

1. Learning chess and playing my first tournaments
2. The U17 state championship
3. The loooong trip
4. Meeting the city and new people
5. My first classical games
6. What the event was really about

Despite having six sections, they are all short (this time), don't worry! I've also analyzed the games I played, and I must tell you, this wasn't easy to do... I made so many crazy moves that even now I struggle to understand what I was thinking! I never thought I would do a "master vs amateur" scenario with my own games, although calling myself a master is a bit of a stretch :-D

I'd like to say thanks to all my friends who gave me permission to use our pictures here, I've enjoyed every single moment back then. Writing about it is so refreshing! Oh, and a big shout out to the chess community who supported me throughout the years, the list is pretty long to write it down here.

In March 2026, I was among the winners of the “Melhores do Ano” (Best of the year) award by the Federação Universitária Cearense de Esportes due to my performance as a chess athlete in 2025! Definitely a big highlight for my relatively short career! Photo: FUCE.

1. Learning chess and playing my first tournaments

In my senior year in high school, the classes happened throughout the day. Long days. Everyone was so bored during the lunch break! We found many ways to have fun; we had card games like Uno, improvised table tennis, music, checkers and... chess. At the time, I liked checkers more (the Brazilian variant, of course), but I somehow saw chess as something to prove myself over my peers due to its "intellectual appeal". You read that right, I started to become competitive pretty early on!

When I learned the Scholar's Mate, I defeated everyone at the school! Then they started to defend it, and I needed to learn new tricks. I read a suggestion to study GM Yasser Seirawan's "Winning Chess" series, which I did diligently and quickly studied them all from cover to cover. A surge in my level happened, as I went from complete beginner to mid 1600s in online chess! That was enough to become an unstoppable force at my school, even against the adults there. I often clashed with one of the faculty members, Cpl. Oliveira, as he was the strongest player there, he definitely pushed me to train harder.

From left to right: Cabo (Corporal at the time, now Sargeant) Oliveira and Sargento (Sargent at the time, now Lieutenant) Farias, they were essential in my early chess career. I’ve visited them again in 2025 at my old school, but my head wasn’t shaved clean like back then. A few years after I left my school, it founded a chess club, and many of the kids look up to me now! Even I don’t believe it when I write this. Photo: Personal archives.

The price I paid? No one there wanted to play with me again. I started to take a liking for seeing the fruits of the effort I put into the game. I thought it was time to face players outside my school's walls, and I found organizers of local youth tournaments through Facebook. I did quite well in my age group, but against adults I got completely slaughtered; I once left an adult tournament with 0,5/5, and that half-point was difficult to earn! I never enjoyed losing, especially this badly, but I was always there because there were medals for the U18 kids! Talking about incentive!

I never thought much about taking chess to the next level at that time. Sure, I was competitive, but NOT THAT competitive. I was always so lazy, it's crazy to think how much I achieved despite my aversion to intensive effort. In late September 2017, when everything was relatively calm, our school wanted to know who wanted to represent it at the Jogos Escolares (the state U17 championship, which included many sports). I thought a competition would take place to choose who would go, but everyone simply said to send me right away! Sgt. Farias decided he would accompany me there, and I was against the idea because he would go "only to watch me lose all the games".

2. The U17 state chess championship

The event was more serious than I thought. I saw some friends there, and many of the players were followed by their coaches. I was happy to have Sgt. Farias by my side, even though he didn't play chess. The kids from the private schools had chess clubs and coaches, while it was only me and the internet. Looking back now, I see this allowed me to play under no pressure, as I had nothing to prove. There were twelve players, so I'd be happy to take at least 6th place. Despite being a high-stakes tournament, the time control was 15+0 (it should've been 60+10, just like the nationals), which is bound to cause drama for the arbiters. My lack of experience made me miss that potential issue, but we were lucky that nothing bad happened.

Then in round 1 I faced the clear favorite, Tailson Pereira. I had never played him until then, as he was always playing the U16 sections while I was playing the U18 ones. All the other kids were afraid of him, because he held large positive scores against them all. While I didn't feel entirely intimidated, I thought a draw would be a good result to secure the 6th place. I employed my favorite opening at the time, the Petroff Defense, and succeeded in holding a pawn down endgame.

That's me against Tailson Pereira, and it's funny that the picture was taken when I had just played 2... Nf6, the Petroff Defense! I didn't know yet that the first game would be decisive in my campaign. Photo: Personal archives.

I didn't think much of it, but thinking about it now, I believe this startled the other kids. I see that I wasn't out for blood yet. Then in game two I played my favorite White opening at the time, the Italian game, which I misplayed badly and ended up finding myself two pawns down out from the opening. The middlegame was crazy, and pretty much like the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, I won the game in a pawn race!

In game three, I employed the Petroff once again, but the opponent was even less experienced and I won quickly. In game four, however, I started to feel the heat. Carlos Davi was an opponent who I considered close to equal to me in terms of strength, so he was fully capable of beating me. He had just lost to Tailson, so he needed to win. I again played the Italian, but I played the opening even worse than in game two and I was down three pawns out from the opening! But with so many pawns missing, the board was totally open, and I was able to build a comeback with my pieces. After a king hunt, I was able to finish the game with the rare double check + checkmate. I wish I had the full game here.

Then we reached the decisive game five. Only then I realized I was leading the event and had the advantage of a draw! I got pretty nervous, and Sgt. Farias helped me to calm down, he even gave me an energy bar! I was going to face Samuel Araújo, who lost to Carlos Davi and beat Tailson Pereira. I played him only once before, and I lost. I forgot about that, and the Petroff was again on the board!

Then we reached the critical moment of the game, and of the whole tournament for me. In order to double my rooks in the second rank, I had to allow my opponent to grab several pawns of mine. He seemed to be oblivious to the threat I was setting up; a perpetual check! Rooks doubled, mission accomplished! There was the draw in my hands, yet I hesitated! I started to panic, thinking that Tailson would overtake me in the tiebreak criteria. I think I spent five minutes (in a 15+0 game!) to decide what to do. If I decided to play for more, well, I was down a lot of material as well on time, which made me nervous. Then a sudden realization came: "wait a minute, Samuel beat Tailson, and Carlos beat Samuel, so I'm the ONLY unbeaten player here!". That was last-minute inspiration made me go for the perpetual check, securing the draw and the 1st place! I can't forget that Samuel was the first one to congratulate me.

I cried afterwards, I was so happy! A kid who never traveled more than 200 km suddenly was about to cross the whole country! It was so hard to believe. Sgt. Farias was so happy, and he even told me his heart almost stopped when I hesitated to take the draw! The female champion, Gizmara Alves, agreed to choose him as our "coach" for the nationals (a wise decision, of course). I called my parents, and they were baffled! Was that a prank? This victory ignited a series of events that changed my life forever; in my previous writings, I mentioned that if I had left this tournament empty-handed, I would never know what chess could bring me and it wouldn't take long to see my interest for the game dissipating. By the way, back at the school I was treated like a hero, I was the only one to make it to the nationals and almost got a parade for myself happy It was time to go to Brasília!

A picture with Sgt. Farias, the female champion Gizmara Alves (in the middle) and the tournament organizers. I was holding my tears! Photo: Personal archives.

3. The loooong trip

Just a week later, a state government's secretary gathered all the athletes, their coaches and parents to discuss the specifics of the trips. I was under the assumption we would go by plane, given that 2000+ km isn't a walk in the park. I didn't know what an airport looked like other than what I've seen in the movies (Resident Evil: Degeneration isn't a good reference :-D). Then he revealed the drastic news; there was a budget to send everyone by plane, but the names weren't sent in time, so we would need to go by bus. Almost everyone protested, and I didn't care because I was happy with the prospect of seeing half of Brazil by land. Only years later I realized the dangers of long trips by land, especially with so many kids aboard.

My mother helped me to prepare my luggage, and my father took us to the rendezvous point. They definitely felt the sting of sending their oldest son away for more than a week. The bus trip would be long, and that year was the one I was starting to become more extroverted and talkative, much to my colleagues' dismay. With Sgt. Farias by my side, I had free escort everywhere! The trip took around 48 consecutive hours, stopping only to eat, and the drivers took turns. I was right, I saw so many different geological structures along the way, Brazil is really beautiful! Only then I started to appreciate Geography, looking at book pictures is nothing compared to seeing the places yourself. I took notes of the vegetation, the buildings, the reliefs and everything else.

I'd say the toughest part was to fight boredom, because I couldn't afford to waste my phone's battery. Time passed by really slowly in the bus. We had no major dramas whatsoever, surprisingly. Only in the way back we had a few, but nothing too serious. Have you ever felt that the outward trip is slower but more fun while the return trip is faster but more depressing? One funny episode that I can clearly recall is that one of our colleagues from Judo lost his order ticket in a restaurant (everyone who entered it had one, regardless if they ordered anything or not; in Brazil, we call it "comanda", it's similar to tab in American bars) and the manager got really mad, he wanted to charge quite the amount for it. I joked to my colleague: "If I were you, I'd never set my feet here ever again". Unfortunately, we ended up stopping there during the return trip, completely ruining the joke. Everything was settled peacefully, by the way.

4. Meeting the city and new people

We arrived in Brasília in the early morning of 15th November, 2017. That date celebrates the Proclamation of the Republic in Brazil, and obviously political movements and protests were scheduled for that day. The police pulled us over, thinking that we were a new wave of protesters. They let us enter the city after realizing we were only kids. We arrived too early in the hotel, so we went for some sight-seeing with the adults. Brasília is the biggest planned city in Brazil, I found everything so amazing! The buildings, the fauna and the flora! Palácio do Itamaraty, Praça dos Três Poderes, Palácio do Planalto, Catedral Metropolitana de Brasília... All of those iconic structures. Imagine an architecture student going through a open-air museum like that! I almost considered following that area due to my Brasília trip and Minecraft :-D

The delegation of the state of Ceará, with all the athletes and coaches gathered for the picture at the Praça dos Três Poderes! Photo: Personal archives.

The hotel was so fancy! It was a historical one, and I saw a very old plaque that said Queen Elizabeth II was hosted there many decades ago. The breakfast definitely made me feel like a king! I'd say the meals and the general coziness was what made me finally start developing class consciousness, and I was like; "hey, why don't I have all of this more often?". I also started to wonder if there weren't similar opportunities at college level, maybe I could prolong this king lifestyle? The Jogos Escolares da Juventude 2017 was just starting.

Everyone was then sent to the Centro de Convenções Ulysses Guimarães, which was adapted to be essentially a recreation and hangout spot for the athletes during the event. There were so many games and activities! I particularly enjoyed Rugby and Just Dance; in the former, I could actually play toe-to-toe against athletes from other sports because I was a Capoeira and Muay Thai practitioner at the time. I was finding Just Dance silly at first, but then I saw many of the songs that I liked and decided to give it a go... I got hooked, I played there SEVERAL times throughout the week. I got to a point where I was practicing with Youtube videos back at my hotel room in order to wipe out everyone in the next day!

This Just Dance round ("Cheap Thrills", by Sia) only featured chess players! From left to right: Jennifer Oliveira, Gabriela Diniz, Morgana Botelho, Abias Jacobsen and me. To our surprise, Abias managed to me beat me in the last few seconds! I don't remember being angry that day, but it does look like I was trying hard to win! Photo: Sabrina Libardi.

The chess tournament would happen in the same building, we didn't need a sports court or swimming pools, only a closed room. In the general assembly, I had a big surprise; the presence of three titled players, two FMs and one CM. I didn't know there was any U18 player in Brazil rated above 2000 FIDE, so titled ones were beyond me. "Adriano, don't act dumb, you had internet". Well, yes, but I only consumed foreign content for chess (e.g for videos, I mostly watched Agadmator), I was completely unaware of Brazilian players except for the GMs. I remember I saw on Facebook a few weeks earlier a post celebrating the then IMs Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and Awonder Liang, I thought they were exceptions. Nowadays, young GMs feel more like a rule.

I was unrated, but I obviously had the low-rated aura that followed me everywhere. During the technical meeting, I sat down with my fellow low-rated players and we quickly developed our friendships; Sabrina Libardi and Morgana Botelho were the first people I interacted with. It was funny how smoothly things went for us in the lower boards in the social aspect, because we played under no pressure and simply accepted that we would be completely destroyed. I felt there was some sort of rating requirement to talk with the higher rated fellas. Two major exceptions were Abias Jacobsen and CM Vitor Frois, who were very friendly despite both being somewhat introverted at the time (Frois changed SO MUCH over the years in that regard). As the days went by, we had all our "cliques", and we enjoyed every second.

In my previous blog post, I dedicated a moment to our late friend Abias Jacobsen, but here we'll celebrate his life. This is Abias and I preparing for a Just Dance round, we were trying to learn Anitta's "Bang" song. Abias, Sabrina, Morgana and I promised each other we would play a bughouse match (a 2x2 chess variant where you can use your teammate's captured pieces) the next time we cross paths. We'll honor our promise and dedicate it to his memory. Photo: Morgana Botelho.

5. My first classical games

In this short chapter, I'll discuss my games in the tournament. If you aren't a chess player, you may skip to the next chapter. As I said in the introduction, annotating those games was a very challenging task because I've made many inexplicable moves, but I tried my best to come up with a reasoning for all of them. I hope it'll be at least somewhat instructive for the lower-rated audience. All the games are grouped in the study below:

When I first read the list of players in the tournament, I had the foolish goal of finishing as the best placed among the ‘nordestinos’ (i.e. people from the northeast region of Brazil, where I come from). After the first two games, my goal was to finish within the top 20. Before the last round, my goal was simply not finish last! I ended up finishing in third to last, and I struggled hard to get that place! A huge contrast with the intercollegiate nationals I’d play a few years later, where I was often fighting for the podium (and ended up achieving that twice!).

Things were far more interesting for me in the blitz event. First of all, the event allowed both girls and boys play against each other, which was very surprising even for the newcomers like myself. Secondly, quick time controls meant that I wouldn’t feel misery for hours, as all the suffering would end fast. I ended up scoring two wins and and one draw after seven games; two losses of mine came from illegal moves (at the time, the first illegal move in blitz would lead to a loss), and I was winning in one of them! The girls gave me a beatdown too, there was nowhere else to run. I started to enjoy blitz after that tournament, I format that I played and improved on consistently ever since.

6. Realizing what the event was really about

Ambition is healthy as long as it's grounded, and that's what happened in my games. It was unrealistic to consider even a top 10 in the tournament, and realizing that during the tournament completely freed me. I started to focus a bit more on the activities in the recreation center, and I became more and more competitive even in foosball. I went to Just Dance so many times that I ruined my shirts with all the sweating! I couldn't hang around the city because I was a minor, but I didn't feel bad about it. Sgt. Farias went to a mall nearby, but I was among the kids who didn't wanna go, which I regretted (I ended up going to that specific mall only in 2022, during my third trip to Brasília!). Oh, and I never quit Just Dance, I even faced in real life the two-time Just Dance World Champion Diegho San... I was wiped out!

By then, I understood how important sports are for the youth. I'm far from Olympic material (especially chess), and I didn't get anywhere close to the podium, but that's not the point. The point is actually having the opportunity to play, to travel, to laugh, to dance and everything else. I was quite privileged if we put other athletes' stories into perspective. From that moment, I stopped seeing sports as a luxury and started to see them as important public policy. It changed the lives of everyone there!

In 2018, I played in only one official chess tournament, as I focused in studying to enroll at the university. It was organized by Farias Brito, a big-time private school where I had a scholarship that year (I fooled them, they thought I was aiming for the Med school, that was never the plan). This is me as the U18 champion alongside my long-time friend WNM Marina Miranda as the U16 champion! Photo: Moezio Correia/Farias Brito.

There were also people I knew I'd see again, especially the chess players. Some of them I took only a year to see, others took almost ten, but the cordiality remains intact. Quite a few disappeared, I don't even know if they still play chess. I even stumbled upon some of them in different Brazilian cities, by chance, would you believe that? Would you also believe that I went to a wedding ceremony between two chess players, and I was among the weakest players there? Such is life.

As the final days approached, I started to feel more sad. At the same time, I was missing my friends, my family, my bedroom... We have a Portuguese word for that: Saudade. It's funny that I can't easily translate it here, because the feeling isn't easy to describe even in my native Brazilian Portuguese. I believe the whole point of the good things in life, as well life itself, is that it has an end. Nothing for us is eternal, and that's why we should make the most out of every millisecond we have here. I peacefully understood it was time to go home and return to my daily life... not that it would be calm, because I would face several school exams at once due to my trip!

This is my favorite picture from the trip, it has been my Facebook's cover image for almost ten years now! In my opinion, it decently showcases how chess tournaments can go beyond the 64 squares. From left to right: David Gadelha, Morgana Botelho, me, Luis Peixoto (floor), Abias Jacobsen (rest in peace, my friend), Karoline Lobo (floor), Larissa Yunes and Sabrina Libardi. Photo: Personal archives.

I managed to pass every subject, more comfortably than I thought! This wrapped up my high school, and my eyes would then turn to the university. In Brazil, the most common way to enroll at a public university (public universities historically hold more prestige than private ones here) is by taking a national exam called ENEM. Around that time, I realized I could take part in the Jogos Universitários Brasileiros, essentially the same event but for university students. Time to grab two dreams at once!

That's me in my last Jogos Universitários Brasileiros in 2025, the intercollegiate nationals. I cut my long hair (people said I looked like John Wick ;-D) and shaved my beard, and I ended up having my best classical tournament so far! I never got rid of the habit of staring at the camera, though. Photo: Alisson Frazao/CBDU.

That concluded 2017 for me, and on a high note, I'd dare to say. I already documented in my first blog post for Chessable my chess development in 2018 and 2019, so I'll leave it at that. 2017 was a fantastic year for me, and I couldn't imagine the butterfly effect that some of my small actions would cause.

In the end, I'd like to share a thought that somewhat describes everything that happened. It was luck. Wait, don't take it in a mystic way, like if I had super powers or anything like that. Luck for me is exactly what Seneca described: "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity".

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
— Seneca.

I was helped in many different ways by many people, given great opportunities, and I managed to take most of them. There are always people more capable and hardworking than us who may never get the same chances. That’s why we must recognize our privilege, and use it to create opportunities for others. I thank every single of you who supported me in one way or another, and also for taking your time to read my blog posts. I hope chess keeps bringing good things for us!

Kind regards,
Adriano.