An 11-year-old chess star, Tanitoluwa ‘Tani’ Adewumi, has revealed in a recent interview that he intends to become the game’s youngest-ever grandmaster after becoming a national master earlier this year.
The youngest grandmaster currently is 12-year-old Abhimanyu Mishra, but Tani is putting in the hours to try to get there faster. According to reports, the young champion, Tani practices for seven hours when he gets home from school. He can practice for up to 10 hours a day in case he has no schoool.
Much of Tani’s training involves watching the world’s best players such as reigning world champion, Magnus Carlsen and grandmasters Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian, and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Tani reveals that he studies how they think and even how they plot every single move.
To reach the status of grandmaster, the highest title in chess, Tani will have to achieve two grandmaster norms: an award given for a high level of performance in a chess tournament, as well as earning a Federation Internationale des Echecs (FIDE) rating of 2,500.
It is worth noting that Tani’s early competitive experiences weren’t easy. When he played his first chess tournament, he unfortunately lost all of his games.
“It did take me time, of course”, he says “I believe it takes everybody time”.
Tani’s success changes family’s life
However, Tani’s success in chess has so far yielded a growing collection of trophies, the most treasured of which is the title he won at the New York State chess championship in 2019, not necessarily because of the way he played, but because it changed his family’s life forever.
Tani, speaking in an interview said: “That’s the one that really boosted us up to become where we are today, and also me and my chess”.
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In June 2017, nearly two years before he won the state championship title, Tani and his family fled northern Nigeria, worried about attacks by extremist group, Boko Haram.
They lived in a homeless shelter in Manhattan after moving to the United States. Shortly afterwards, Tani joined the chess club at his school in New York, on the agreement that the registration fee could be waived.
When word spread of Tani’s state championship title, an outpouring of financial support for his family followed. Tani’s father, Kayode Adewumi, who works as a real estate agent said:
“One family paid for a year’s rent in Manhattan, one family gave us in 2019 a brand-new Honda, and the Saint Louis Chess Club in Missouri invited the family and the coaches to come and pay a visit. A lot of people really helped us, a lot of people gave us financial [support] and money… they donated money for us to get out from the shelter”.
Adewumi Family receives more support
The family set up a GoFundMe page, which provided the housing, legal;and educational funds needed to support the family in the US. Further donations are being channeled into the Tanitoluwa Adewumi Foundation, which supports underprivileged children around the world, Mr. Adewumi said.
“We need to give back to the needy, because we know what it takes; we’ve tasted everything when we were in the shelter. Some people are still there. We need to help the needy, especially the chess community and the people that need help. That’s why we put the money into the foundation, to help people”.
The family feels indebted to the sport of chess, so much so that, through the foundation, they have contributed money to a chess organization in Africa to encourage more people to play the game.
Tani’s story bears similarities to the Netflix series ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, a fictional story about an orphaned Kentucky girl in the 1960s who became a chess champion in her teens. Tani, who has watched the series, said he “definitely did” see himself in it. He further said:
“Chess is everything to me, it’s my life. That’s how we came to where we are today”.
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