The Most Famous
CHESS PLAYERS from Brazil
This page contains a list of the greatest Brazilian Chess Players. The pantheon dataset contains 374 Chess Players, 2 of which were born in Brazil. This makes Brazil the birth place of the 39th most number of Chess Players behind Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Brazilian Chess Players of all time. This list of famous Brazilian Chess Players is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Henrique Mecking (1952 - )
With an HPI of 45.33, Henrique Mecking is the most famous Brazilian Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages on wikipedia.
Henrique Costa Mecking (born 23 January 1952), also known as Mequinho, is a Brazilian chess grandmaster who reached his zenith in the 1970s and is still one of the strongest players in Brazil. He was a chess prodigy, drawing comparisons to Bobby Fischer, although he did not achieve the International Grandmaster title until 1972. He won the Interzonals of Petropolis 1973 and Manila 1976. His highest FIDE rating is 2635, achieved in 1977, when he was ranked number four in the world. He became the 3rd best in the world in 1977, behind only World Champion Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. He is the first Brazilian to become a grandmaster. Despite winning his first national championship at the age of 13, he played in very few tournaments. He won at Vršac in 1971 and finished third with Robert Byrne (after the co-winners Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi) at Hastings in 1971–72. In 1975, he twice shared second place behind Ljubomir Ljubojević, firstly at Las Palmas with Ulf Andersson and Mikhail Tal and then at Manila with Lev Polugaevsky, Bent Larsen and Helmut Pfleger. He was considered a contender for the World Championship in the mid-1970s, however his chess career was interrupted by a serious illness (Myasthenia gravis). Mecking played for Brazil in the Chess Olympiads of 1968, 1974, 2002 and 2004.
2. Alexandr Fier (1988 - )
With an HPI of 23.38, Alexandr Fier is the 2nd most famous Brazilian Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Alexandr Hilário Takeda Sakai dos Santos Fier (born 11 March 1988) is a Brazilian chess grandmaster. He competed in the FIDE World Cup in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2023.
Pantheon has 2 people classified as chess players born between 1952 and 1988. Of these 2, 2 (100.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living chess players include Henrique Mecking and Alexandr Fier.
