Grandmasters in Guayaberas

During the two weeks leading up to the Dallas tournament, it became apparent that Miami Dade had some glaring disadvantages in a matchup with UMBC and UTD, and even the fourth contender, Duke. The MDC team doesn't have a travel budget (a U.S. Chess Federation grant paid for the trip to the tournament), they don't have practice space, and, most troubling, they don't have nearly enough time to "book up."

Training for a chess tournament can be as intensive and time-consuming as prepping for med school exams. There are 85 billion ways of playing just the first move. Players must learn offensive and defensive philosophies for the opening, middle, and end games. Databases, such as ChessBase, now enable players to scour millions of games — dating back to the 1600s. Competitors routinely reread books by Russian grandmasters such as Alexander Alekhine and Aron Nimzowitsch. Some players dedicate games that include dozens of moves to memory.

To achieve grandmaster status, players must win consistently against internationally ranked opponents; many serious competitors believe this level of chess is incompatible with college. Hikaru Nakamura, the New York teenager who is currently the second-highest-ranked player in the United States, skipped college, believing it would hurt his game. The U.S. Chess Federation offers the $32,000 Samford Fellowship to promising young players so they can stay out of school for a year. And UMBC and UTD, which treat chess like Florida State treats football, give generous stipends so students don't have to work and can concentrate intently on chess.

The MDC team, however, does not have such luxuries. Players often have ridiculous schedules — juggling work, family, school, and chess. They don't practice on a regular basis and almost never get together in person. "Other than tryouts, it's almost exclusively online," says Rene Garcia.

Renier and Rodelay hold multiple jobs. The youngest team member, Charles Galofre, a twenty-year-old business student, works full-time as a courier, driving between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. each day. He practices, he jokes, "during traffic jams." And the team elder, 40-year-old Alberto Hernandez, who is married and trying to earn an education degree, toils from 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. daily as a security guard in a West Miami office building and then relaxes on the weekends from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. as a bouncer at La Covacha.

"I really don't know how they'll have time to prepare," said Rene, a week before the tournament.

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Perhaps this is no surprise, given his time crunch. But fifteen minutes before the first match in the Final Four, Alberto, who is bulky, short, and bald, chugs a pregame latte and, in his rough English, admits that he has done almost nothing to prepare for his match. He doesn't even know his opponent's identity.

"Charbonneau," he says, reading a bulletin board. This is UMBC's Pascal Charbonneau, from Quebec, a two-time Canadian champion and soon-to-be grandmaster with a Chess Federation ranking more than 200 points higher than Alberto's — a difference that is generally considered insurmountable.

"It doesn't matter who I play," Alberto says, smiling and shrugging with the cockiness of either a genius or fool.

But before you conclude that this is simply pregame bluster — or that winging it against The Frenchman is certain suicide — consider this: This bouncer is a prodigy. He spent his childhood, beginning at age nine, in an elite chess boarding school. By sixteen, he was one of Cuba's top five junior players. During his late teens and early twenties, he traveled the world (Finland, Spain, South America), competing for the national team. Before immigrating to the United States, he did nothing but play, teach, and lecture about chess. Even when he was detained for nine months at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in 1994 after fleeing Cuba on a raft, he was fanatical about his game. During his Gitmo internment, he played with crude pieces made by melting down plastic food ration boxes and soda bottles. He used Coke can rings to signify the king and queen.

In the United States, though, there weren't great opportunities for a professional chess player. So he worked as a dishwasher at China Grill. He was happy living on the Beach, beginning a new life, and learning English at MDC. For almost five years, he stopped playing the game. "Chess was the past," he says, swearing he would never devote his life to the game.

But in 2000, Alberto began occasionally playing blind chess with his friend Rodelay, during nights at La Covacha. And then came the 2002 Pan-Ams. Rodelay called and Alberto agreed — to help a friend.

Even with nil preparation, Alberto is supremely confident. What's more, moments before his match, the old prodigy reveals what sounds like a brilliant I-have-no-time-to-study solution. It's an old trick from Cuba, designed to deal with younger players who are constantly studying.