José Gabriel Cardoso was four years old when he won his first chess tournament. His sister taught him to move the figures to entertain him. Realizing that he had a special talent, he accompanied him to the chess championship in Parque de Cali, her birthplace in western Colombia. José Gabriel came first in the tournament, surprising his family and the other competitors, much older than him, and making the headlines in the local newspapers: “José Cardoso, four years old, the youngest chess player,” said a message her parents gave her still have. In the photo, the little prodigy in a blue cap is concentrating on a game.
From that moment until today, José Gabriel has not stopped winning. He won all children’s and youth championships in his city, department, state and region. In 2019, at the age of 14, he finished third at the world championships in his category in Greece. At 16, he was senior champion of Colombia. And at 17, his current age, he became a Grandmaster in Chess (GM), the highest title a professional player can aspire to.
José Gabriel Cardoso, when he was five years old, at a chess competition
With this recognition, which he received a few weeks ago at the recent World Chess Olympiad in Chennai (India), José Gabriel established himself as the youngest Colombian grandmaster and tenth in history. He won the title in a match against Brazilian GM Luis Paulo Supi. “The position was complex. I had good chances of winning, but I decided to replay games and we ended in a draw,” Cardoso tells EL PAÍS from Barcelona, where he plays the last tournament of the Catalan Circuit. With this game he reached 2,500 ELO points, a kind of classification of the International Chess Federation, which is one of the requirements to become a grandmaster. There are only 550 players of this level in the world.
Jorge Mario Clavijo, his current coach, explains that the next step in José Gabriel’s career is to become the number one player in Colombia. “It’s very close,” says Clavijo on the phone. Cardoso is more ambitious: “We all aspire to be grandmasters, but we have to keep working towards it. Chess doesn’t stop there. I want to be the first Colombian player to reach the world elite.” Armando López, a Cuban professor and longtime coach of José Gabriel, agrees: “He is a simple man with a great chess ambition to reach the elite,” he explains.
José Gabriel Cardozo after winning a youth championship Courtesy
“Discipline is my greatest talent”
From Barcelona, José Gabriel tells that at the age of five he entered the league of Valle del Cauca, the Colombian department of which Cali is the capital; who trains from Monday to Saturday, sometimes half a day, sometimes all day; and what he likes best in life besides chess is swimming and playing table tennis. Like all good chess players, Cardoso works out to stay fit and spends hours in front of the computer playing online games. “I love the ball game, one minute and three minutes,” he says.
— Do you think you need more innate talent or more discipline to be among the best in the world?
— To get far you need both, but hard work beats ingenuity. Discipline is my greatest talent.
Coach Clavijo assures that José Gabriel is organized, consistent and knows what he wants. “This was achieved thanks to the family’s unconditional support and demands.” Armando Cardoso, José Gabriel’s father, says from his home in a slum of Cali that he and his wife took turns accompanying the boy to tournaments. “To be successful, you need family support. We do not hesitate to accompany Gabriel throughout the process. We have made many sacrifices. We’re a humble family that took resources from where they didn’t have to help him achieve his dreams,” he says. And he concludes: “Now we are very happy with what he has achieved. I want you to know that we are very proud.”
José Gabriel’s father remembers the distant times when he still hit his son. “We played on Sundays. When he lost the queen I forgave him so he wouldn’t get discouraged, I let him play back but my mother told me not to spoil it, I had to learn to lose. Now he beats me, even if he plays without a queen, he’s already on a different level,” Cardoso’s father jokes. It was very exciting for him and the whole family to see José Gabriel’s last games in India, as one of the five players who represented Colombia at the Olympic Games. Because of the time change, they had to stay up all night to see him live, sometimes he would play at 3 or 4 in the morning, but they never stopped accompanying him or working hard for him.
Don Armando calls on the government to make chess a compulsory subject in Colombian schools and to provide more funding for young talent. “We don’t have our own house, we live for rent in a small town. Gabriel has no room, he sleeps in a small corner”. Despite the size of the house, there is a special place for the hundreds of medals, diplomas and trophies won by José Gabriel. “If Colombia supported chess more, we could be a power. There’s a lot of talent.”
José Gabriel Cardoso with the other members of the Colombian Olympic team in Chennai, India.
the art of sacrifice
José Gabriel recognizes that in chess, as in life, you have to sacrifice something valuable to be successful. His father confirms it: “He has a clear, brilliant, transparent, spontaneous, self-sacrificing game.” In chess, a sacrifice is a move that gives up a piece for tactical gain or positional equalization and intentionally loses something important to get closer to checkmate. “Chess has everything, calculation, imagination, logic, intuition and sacrifice,” says Gabriel.
On the back of the phone, the murmurs of his teammates, who are also in Barcelona, can be heard. One of them is Santiago Ávila, his eternal rival. He is an 18-year-old from Palmira in Valle del Cauca, with whom Gabriel played in the children’s tournament final. “They have a very nice rivalry,” says Maestro Clavijo, “I think they are the best in Colombia at the moment, or they will be soon.” Today, according to the official rankings, the best player in the country is Jaime Cuartas, a 47- year old man from Antioquia who has been living in Spain with his family for a long time.
Coaches Clavijo and López agree that chess helps children and young people make better decisions. “You get used to always analyzing before you make a move, to quickly see the possible combinations and the consequences. This is reflected later in everyday life,” says Clavijo. And he adds: “Normally chess players have good mathematical logic, they develop the ability for abstraction and calculation by imagining a position and moving the pieces in their heads”. Cardoso, who is a testament to these virtues, insists that the most important thing chess taught him as a child was concentration. “Standing in front of a board forces you to stop for a moment, look carefully, you have to calm down and learn to be patient, my sister taught me that and it’s what you need to play chess well .” Cardoso says he wants to get a university degree later, but he wants to live with dignity and help his family with chess. “I think if you can make a living from chess in Colombia, especially from teaching. Being a grandmaster opens a lot of doors, not just in chess, for life, which guarantees you an almost permanent job.”
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