TIMES SQUARE — The chess players taking on 12-year-old Mariangel Vargas in weekly competitions at a Midtown church would never guess that she knew nothing about the game until a little more than a year ago.

But the young Colombian migrant didn’t pick up a pawn until she came to New York City in May 2022, her family fleeing from gang violence. 

Now she does it every day for hours, and with the support of the nonprofit The Gift of Chess, she has already won seventh place in her division at the annual New York State Girls’ Championship. 

After making it to the U.S.-Mexico border with little more than the clothes on their backs, Mariangel and her family were bused to New York, and ended up in a shelter in Times Square. She was enrolled in P.S. 11, and  introduced to a chess club, and the game quickly became her passion. 

To date, she has played in 55 tournaments and is ranked in the top 50 of girls her age in the United States. Her United States Chess Federation ranking is over 1250.

“I feel nervous and at the same time, when you play, you feel very focused on the game,” Mariangel said.

---

---

Every week, she walks a few blocks from the school to St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, where The Gift of Chess has rented out space for chess players to practice. The Gift of Chess founder Russell Makofsky was first introduced to Mariangel when he visited P.S. 11 to distribute fliers about the organization’s weekly meetings.

“What stuck out to me originally was her enthusiasm and willingness to take advantage of an opportunity. We opened the door of the chess club and who showed up? Her and her family,” Makofsky told The Tablet. 

The Gift of Chess is a New York City-based charity that utilizes chess as a “low-cost, universally recognized tool to expand opportunities everywhere,” according to Makofsky. 

Looking to create a generation of critically-minded individuals, the charity is committed to donating one million chess boards across the world by 2030. 

Mariangel’s father, Francisco, feels “very proud” watching his daughter grow in perseverance and talent with chess. In addition, he believes her success represents how they “are Latin American immigrants in this country, where we come to do good things and not bad things.” 

“She has participated in everything and has been involved in everything, and we as parents are proud of her, of watching her grow little by little, because that is beautiful,” he said in Spanish.

It was no easy task for the Vargas family to make it to New York, but after having their lives threatened in their native country, they felt they had no choice but to leave. 

Francisco and Alexandra were running a foundation working to stop people from joining violent groups that run rampant in some parts of Columbia, but in retaliation, gang members attacked Alexandra, at one point holding guns to her head.

They threw me, hit me, took out their weapons, and put them to my head. They began to tell my whole story, how many children I had, what time we left for work,” she said in Spanish. “I said, for God’s sake, why does he know so much about me?”

Following that harrowing incident, she and her husband decided to fly to Mexico and then walked more than six hours to the Texas border. Along the way, they were discovered by Border Patrol and taken to a border encampment. After some time there, Texas officials offered to bus them to New York.

The couple conceded that when they were separated from her two oldest children — with no information about their location or safety for 10 days — their faith in God was sorely tested. 

But their belief in the Virgin Mary and God’s guidance helped them persevere. They passed that faith on to Mariangel, who prayed before each of her chess matches.

“I always say the following: In life, they put obstacles in front of us, but with the hand of the Lord we always pass it, no matter how strong the obstacle is, how high, how hard, how much that path is thorny, the Lord will always help us,” Francisco Vargas said.

Mariangel is looking to compete at the KCF All-Girls National Championship in Chicago on April 28, and her transportation to the tournament will be sponsored by a generous couple. Beyond that, she has a clear goal for her chess career:

“I want to be a grandmaster by studying hard, doing a lot of tactics, [studying] books, going into all the tournaments, and winning,” she said.