João de Souza Mendes was a seven-time Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 champion.

Born in Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, Souza Mendes played in the Brazilian Chess Championship

Brazilian Chess Championship

The 1998 championship was held 9–19 December in Itabirito, Minas Gerais State.The field of sixteen played a series of two-game single elimination matches to determine the finalists....

 29 times, winning in 1925 (the first year the tournament was held), 1928, 1929, 1930, 1943, 1954, and 1958. He finished second five times, the last time in 1965 at age 73 when thirteen-year-old Henrique Mecking

Henrique Mecking

Henrique Mecking was a leading Brazilian chess Grandmaster in the 1970s. He was a very strong player at an early age , drawing comparisons to Bobby Fischer, although he did not achieve the International Grandmaster title until 1971...

 won, and took third five times.

He played for Brazil in Chess Olympiads at Buenos Aires 1939 and Helsinki 1952.

Souza Mendes died in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

.

External links

• Souza Mendes' Chess Career at brasilbase (photo, brief biography, tournament and match record, and game scores in PGN
  Portable Game Notation
  Portable Game Notation is a computer-processible format for recording chess games ; many chess programs recognize this extremely popular format due to its being stored in plain text.-History:...
  
  )