Escuela de Ajedrez del Club Banco República

From a public simultaneous to an intergenerational school

The public record of chess at CBR predates the school pages now available online. In November 2004, LaRed21 reported a public forty-board simultaneous exhibition convened by the Escuela Uruguaya de Ajedrez and Club Banco República at the club.

The event shows that CBR was already serving as a meeting place for chess players and spectators in 2004. The available history does not establish when the school began in its present form.

A 2011 profile described Roselli’s school at CBR as drawing more than fifty children, while other visitors came to study, watch games, step away from routine, or exercise their minds. Ten years later, an official club announcement described groups for children, adolescents and young adults, adult beginners, and advanced players, with both in-person and Zoom formats at that time.

Both periods show the same recurring trait: different ages, playing levels, and reasons for gathering around chess.

Why face-to-face conversation matters

In a 2021 interview, Roselli argued that face-to-face teaching allows questions, stories, gestures, and relationships that a screen cannot fully reproduce. He also said clubs should create pleasant, family-like tournament settings in which a community can develop.

Roselli’s views help explain the school’s format during those years. Its teaching took place inside an institution where chess could be both a structured lesson and one form of social participation among many.

The emphasis on conversation did not mean rejecting technology. CBR’s documented 2021 offer combined meetings at the club with Zoom classes, a practical response to the conditions of that period.

The distinctive choice was to preserve the educational and social value assigned to the physical room while using remote tools as another channel. In contrast with a fully online academy, the club setting also allowed learning to include watching a game, waiting for a board, or talking with other participants.

Individual representation and team strength

CBR’s competitive representation became especially visible from 2021 through 2023. FIDE recorded Roselli, playing for CBR, as the 2021 Uruguayan champion with his twentieth national title, while seventeen-year-old Facundo Vázquez, also representing CBR, finished second.

In 2022, Alejandro Hoffman won the absolute title and Vázquez was runner-up, both under the CBR name; in 2023, Roselli earned title number twenty-one and Vázquez again placed second. The sequence brought players from different generations together under the CBR name.

Team results add a different scale to those individual names. The federation’s 2022 report records CBR as absolute interclub champion in a field of fifteen teams, eight clubs, and seventy-two players; the club also hosted that year’s forty-two-player national semifinal.

In 2024, the federation recorded thirty-four teams from thirteen institutions and 167 players, and CBR placed second in the A division. Vázquez also won the national Under-20 title and finished second in the absolute final, with Claudio Coppola third.

During those years, CBR combined three distinct roles: chess school, tournament venue, and representative team.