Two players from the Tulum Chess Club are in Medellín this week among more than 900 juniors from 30 federations, competing in the nine-round Pan American Youth Chess Festival.
Génesis Sarai Sánchez Dzib and Ángel Eliazin Sánchez Dzib both appear on the official entry list for the XXXVI edition of the festival, organized by the Confederación de Ajedrez de América and the Federación Colombiana de Ajedrez at the Coliseo de Combate Guillermo Gaviria Correa, inside Medellín's Atanasio Girardot sports complex. Their coach, Ernesto Gómez, said both earned their places after months of tactical, strategic, and competitive work.
Tulum's name usually reaches national sports coverage through soccer and boxing. Chess travels differently and much more quietly. A club in a town this size placing two players inside a Mexican delegation of 79 is a result that took years of unglamorous work to produce.
Ángel at 1656, Génesis unrated
Ángel Eliazin Sánchez Dzib enters with a FIDE standard rating of 1656, close to the middle of a field whose average rating sits at 1631. Gómez said he will play the under-16 open section. Génesis Sarai Sánchez Dzib, entered in the girls' under-10 section according to her coach, appears on the same list with no published standard rating at all.
That second detail carries more weight than it looks. Many of her opponents in the under-10 group will be in the same position, since ratings at that age are still forming, and results in Medellín can count toward the first published number ever attached to her name. A tournament like this one is where a rating starts, not where it gets defended.
The Mexican contingent in the standard tournament runs to 79 players, several of them carrying FIDE titles. The two from Tulum sit far down the seeding list, at numbers 361 and 918.
Nine rounds at the Guillermo Gaviria Correa coliseum
The standard tournament runs July 27 through August 1, nine rounds of Swiss pairings at 90 minutes per player with a 30 second increment on every move. At that pace, a single game can stretch past four hours. The wider festival opened July 26 and closes August 2, with rapid and blitz events attached to the same week.
Entries come from 30 federations across the Americas, from Canada and the United States down to Argentina and Chile, plus Caribbean delegations including Jamaica, Curaçao, and the Cayman Islands. Categories run from under-8 to under-18 in both the open and girls' sections. The average age on the entry list is 13.
Colombian organizers projected close to 1,000 athletes when they launched the event in Medellín in June, along with several hundred coaches, delegates, and parents.
"The board knows you," their coach told them
Before the trip to Colombia, Gómez sent his students a message that has since circulated among the club's families.
We are not wishing you luck, because you do not need it. Everything you need is already inside you: the training, the games, the mistakes you corrected, the wins and the losses that shaped you. That does not depend on chance, it depends on your preparation. Trust your work and enjoy every game. The board knows you.
The message was written in Spanish and is translated here. Gómez has described the championship as one of the hardest tests his students have faced, because it measures them against players from across the continent instead of the same regional opponents they see all year.
Months of training behind the Tulum Chess Club's two spots
According to the club, the qualification came out of steady weekly training rather than any single breakthrough result, with the work split between opening preparation, tactical drilling, and competitive practice against stronger players.
The club also frames chess in terms that have little to do with trophies. Coaches and families there present it as a tool for concentration, academic performance, and structured thinking, which is a large part of why parents in Tulum keep bringing children to the boards in the first place. The Tulum Times has not independently reviewed the club's membership figures or its competitive record, and this account of its growth comes from the club and its coach.
What is verifiable is the entry list, and two names from Tulum are on it.
Both finish standard play on August 1
The ninth and final round of the standard tournament is scheduled for August 1, with the festival closing the following day. Results are posted round by round, board by board, on the tournament's official page. For a club that had to earn its way onto that list, the scores coming out of Medellín will be the first hard measure of where chess in Tulum actually stands against the rest of the continent.
Should Tulum's schools and municipal sports budget make room for chess now that two local players have reached a continental tournament? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.