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For chess player, path is open after U.S. move
Nicholas Spangler
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Until he was 16, chess prodigy Bruci Lopez lived in Havana. His talent showed early, and he played in tournaments for the honor of his district. Later, he played in the World Youth Championship for the glory of the Cuban Revolution.
It was a good life except when there was no milk and no meat, which was the case after his father lost his job as a chemical engineer, having mixed himself up in the politics of counterrevolution.
Raul Lopez never worked in Cuba again and as the family's savings ebbed away and life grew steadily worse, he immigrated to Miami. He took a job as a night watchman and sent for his genius son three years ago.
"America is the country of possibilities," he said last week in his apartment in Little Havana. "My son's way is open. He can take his car and go wherever. If he fails here, that is his problem. He can go live under a bridge if that is his choice."
Bruci has not, to his credit, moved to the underside of a bridge, but to Maryland, and chess has much to do with that. At Miami Dade College last year, he started a team with some friends and led it to fourth place in the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, winning the attention of coaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
The once-obscure science and engineering school has dominated college chess over the last decade by enticing the world's top players with full scholarships, like a Division I basketball program. The school made Bruci an offer.
He started there in the fall, recipient of a four-year scholarship and a $15,000 yearly stipend to cover living expenses.
The first time he returned to Miami was December for the Pan-American, where 144 college players hunched over boards, hacking and wheezing, in a huge hotel ballroom. It was flu season.
Most of his former Miami Dade College teammates were there. There were hugs and photographs in between games.
"We joke around, call him traitor," said Rodelay Medina, an old practice partner. "But we're kidding. He's trying to do something for his life. He needs to be there, the deal he got. He'll be our friend forever."
"He looks thin," said Alberto Hernandez. "He doesn't like the food up there. They eat mostly salads. He told me they make their fish without any salt!"
The World Chess Federation has accorded Bruci a master rank, better than 99 percent of the world's tournament players. But at UMBC, which already has two grandmasters, Bruci didn't even make the A team. He plays first board on UMBC's B team, the chess equivalent of coming off the bench.
"Es mejor ser cabeza de raton que no cola de leon," said Hernandez when Bruci could not hear: "Better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion."
Bruci played a good but not brilliant tournament, winning four games, drawing one and losing one. "He could do better," said his coach. "We didn't need that loss."
He may be a weaker player than he was a year ago, Bruci said one day after beating an opponent from MIT, the 16th-ranked woman in the country and one of a handful at the tournament.
"I have to read more, work more; I have more homework," he said. "I can't go to tournaments; if I miss a weekend, I fall behind in school. And if I want to study chess, I have to go by myself in a room. The grandmasters, they have their own group, and I'm still not there. I will not insist to play with them. I don't want to be bothering."
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