10-year-old Chess Prodigy, Tanitoluwa Adewumi has his sights set on becoming the greatest of all time
ST. LOUIS — St. Louis had a special guest in town recently to visit the World Chess Hall of Fame. It just so happens this guest will likely find himself in that same hall of fame someday down the road.
10-year-old chess player Tanitoluwa (“Tani” for short) Adewumi is the definition of a prodigy.
“Tani is the best 10-year-old in the United States, hands-down,” St. Louis Chess Club Executive Director Tony Rich said. “In the U.S. we probably have two a generation… Two or three kids every 20 years maybe.”
And if that wasn’t impressive enough, Adewumi’s story to get to where he’s at now puts things into an entirely different perspective. Adewumi is a Nigerian refugee who once lived in a New York City homeless shelter. Oh, and he’s also written four books already. Impressed yet?
But it’s what Adewumi has planned for his future that should put people on notice.
“I want to become the youngest grandmaster and then probably world champion and break a 2900 rating,” Adewumi said. “The highest (rating) is 2882 by Magnus Carlsen.”
And as you could probably tell, this kid is not short on confidence. When asked if he thinks he could actually break 2900 to become the all-time best, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Yeah,” Adewumi casually replied.
And that kind of success could lead to a big-time payday.
“At 13 years old he could be making $50,000 a year as a grandmaster,” Rich said. “If he continues to improve and becomes one of the best grandmasters in the world… millions of dollars a year.”
But for now, it’s time to practice, which he often does for 10 hours every day, to hone his skills. So one day, he can be back here in St. Louis with his own display in the hall of fame.
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10-Year-Old Tanitoluwa Adewumi Is America’s Newest Chess Master
Since being introduced to chess at the tender age of six, Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi has had one goal. He wants to become the world’s youngest-ever Grandmaster — the highest title a chess player can achieve. The record is currently held by Russian chess player Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin, who qualified for the title in 2002 at the age of 12 years and seven months.
On May 1, 2021, the now 10-year-old Tani came one step closer to achieving his dream by becoming the United State’s newest national chess master. The title, awarded by the United States Chess Federation (USCF), requires players to obtain a rating of between 2200 to 2400. Tani achieved a rating of 2223 by defeating two chess experts, a master, and an international master, at the Fairfield County Chess Club Championship tournament held in Connecticut. The chess prodigy, who practices for up to 11 hours every day after school, says the secret to his success is thinking of his plays ahead of time. Tani told NPR, “On a normal position, I can do up to 20 moves [in advance].”
Tanitoluwa Adewumi
| Tanitoluwa Adewumi | |
|---|---|
 Adewumi (left), receiving 2019 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation award as his father applauds
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| Full name | Tanitoluwa Emmanuel Adewumi |
| Country | United States |
| Born | September 3, 2010[1] Nigeria |
| Title | FIDE Master |
| FIDE rating | 2121 (November 2021} |
| Peak rating | 2121 (November 2021) |
Tanitoluwa Emmanuel Adewumi (born September 3, 2010) is a Nigerian-American chess player who currently holds the title of FIDE Master (FM). A chess prodigy, he won the 2019 K-3 New York State chess championship at the age of 8, after playing the game for only a year, while living with his refugee family in a homeless shelter in Manhattan.
Early life
Tanitoluwa is the son of Kayode James Adewumi (born June 24, 1976, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria) and Oluwatoyin Kuburat Adewumi (born June 16, 1981, Ado Ekiti). He has a brother, Adesina Austin, who is seven years older. Kayode used to run a print shop in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, with 13 employees, and Oluwatoyin used to work as an accountant.
The family is devoutly Christian, and were threatened with violence by the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram. In June 2017, they left Nigeria for the United States and sought religious asylum. Philip Falayi, a pastor in Queens, New York, gave them temporary accommodation, and connected them with the New York City Department of Homeless Services. They were given a place to stay in a homeless shelter in Manhattan. Kayode took work as a dishwasher and as an Uber driver in a rented car, and Oluwatoyin as a cleaner; and Tanitoluwa enrolled in elementary school P.S. 116.
Career
Austin taught Tanitoluwa a chess-like game called “Latter”, using a homemade board and pieces made from Play-Doh. Shawn Martinez, the head chess coach at P.S. 116, introduces students to the game. Tanitoluwa immediately took to it, and wanted to join a club run by 1700-rated coach Russell Makofsky. That would have been expensive; the $330 fee included not only the cost of running the club, but also such things as entries to tournaments, travel, and accommodation. When Adewumi’s mother told Makofsky of the family’s financial situation, he waived the fee. In early 2018, Adewumi, who had been assigned the lowest estimated rating of 105, played in his first tournament. A year later, he had accumulated seven trophies. The teachers, now his coaches, were impressed by his dedication and hard work, and by the progress he had made since starting as a novice.
On March 9–10, 2019, he competed in the 52nd Annual New York State Scholastic Championships (kindergarten-3rd grade division) in Saratoga Springs, New York. He was seeded eighth in a field of 74, with an Elo rating of 1473; more than 200 behind the top rated players. Some of the contestants were from well-to-do families who could afford private coaches. He won the event outright with a score of 5.5/6 (five wins, one draw, no losses). His style of play is aggressive: his coaches were shocked when in his fourth game he sacrificed a bishop for a pawn; alarmed, they fed the position into a chess engine for analysis. It confirmed that the sacrifice was the best move.
On May 1, 2021, at only 10 years old, Adewumi crossed the 2200 Elo rating threshold needed to achieve the official USCF title of National Master, making him the 28th-youngest chess player in history ever to do so.
In August, 2021, he won the under-12 division of the North American Youth Chess Championship, with a score of 8/9. This means that he became a FIDE Master, having surpassed a FIDE rating of 2100 in November 2021.
Reception and media
In 2019, the story of his winning the New York Scholastics was reported by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and rapidly attracted national and international attention both inside and outside the chess world. agadmator, a leading YouTube chess streamer, published an analysis of Adewumi’s only available game from the tournament. Garry Kasparov, former World Chess Champion, praised this achievement by a refugee immigrant. Bill Clinton, former U.S. president, invited him to visit him in his office in Harlem, New York, and he did. Abike Dabiri, Senior Special Assistant on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora to Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, called him “a pride to the nation”. On March 30, 2019, he visited the Saint Louis Chess Club in Missouri, where the U.S. Chess Championship was then in progress, and played several friendly blitz (5 minutes for each player) games, his opponents including Hikaru Nakamura (GM, five-time U.S. Chess Champion), Jennifer Yu (WGM, 2019 U.S. Women’s Chess Champion), and Fabiano Caruana (GM, who had challenged the titleholder, Magnus Carlsen, for the World Chess Championship in November 2018), and was interviewed by Maurice Ashley, the world’s first black GM.
His coaches set up a GoFundMe site shortly after the New York competition, with the target of raising $50,000 for the family by crowdfunding. It raised $254,000 in ten days. Benefactors also offered non-monetary help; including accommodation, a car, academic scholarships, chess books, and pro bono (i.e., free) assistance by immigration lawyers with their asylum application. They accepted one of the more modest offers of accommodation, declined the scholarship offers out of loyalty to P.S. 116, gave one-tenth of the donated money as a tithe to the church which had helped them, and put the rest into a 501(c)(3) trust called the Tanitoluwa Adewumi Foundation to help other children in similar circumstances.
He has expressed an ambition to become the youngest ever chess grandmaster. Three film companies bid on the rights to his story; Paramount Pictures won. A biography, My Name Is Tani, was published on April 14, 2020.
