The story of Candela Belén Francisco Guecamburu, the 17-year-old chess champion of America and world junior

Candela Belén Francisco Guecamburu wrote a new page in the history of Argentine chess. At the age of 17, she became U20 world champion in Mexico, undefeated. She is the first Argentine woman to achieve it, since among men Oscar Panno had achieved it in 1953 in Copenhagen, Carlos Bielicki in 1959 in Münchenstein and Pablo Zarnicki in 1992 in Buenos Aires. The young Argentine overcame Bulgaria’s Beloslava Krasteva in the last round and reached 8.5 points in 11 rounds. However, she had to wait for the outcome of the game between the American Carissa Yip and the Indian Trisha Kanyamarala to be crowned. Although the American won and matched Candela’s units, the best tiebreaker system ended up favoring the Argentine teenager. Francisco Guecamburu had made history last May, when she became undefeated champion of America in the Continental held in Havana, Cuba. That title allowed her to become the number one in the country and become the third national Grand Master of all time, an achievement that had only been achieved by Claudia Amura and Carolina Luján.A Christmas gift that ended up marking her lifeWhen Candela was five years old, Santa Claus brought her a chess board as a gift. And his reaction was as simple as it was terse: “Interesting,” he said and left the game lying in some corner of his house. But, without knowing it, that gift was going to mark his life. And boy did he do it. Some time after that Christmas gift, when the young chess player had already turned nine, she was reunited with the sport of the board when her parents discovered that in a shopping mall in Pilar they gave chess classes on Saturday mornings, at the same time in which they were going to collaborate with a children’s dining room. And there he began to walk a path that he never abandoned again. “When the class ended they asked me if I liked it, I said yes, I went back and that’s how I started,” he had told Filo.news months ago. The member of the Villa Martelli Chess Circle spends several hours of the day in front of the computer, learning and analyzing moves with black and white on the online board. In fact, looking to better manage his schedules to be able to devote more time to chess, this year he began studying at a distance school. Chess helps you think about what you are going to do. Your action can bring consequences that can be good or bad but you have to think well about what you are going to do. And the same applies to life, “says the brand new champion of America and the world youth.

Original source in Spanish