Who remembers Tani Adewumi, the Nigerian refugee in the US who secured the NY State chess championship in 2019, well, he has now won yet another competition to officially become a national chess master at 10.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who was one of Tani Adewumi’s early admirers, had also written two pieces on the youngster and mentioned him in his 2020 book, “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope,” enthusiastically tweeted the news on Sunday.
It was gathered that the game the 5th grader played to snag the national title was that of the Chess Club of Fairfield County (CCFC). It was earlier billed to hold on May 1, with Adewumi listed as one of the players to compete.
Tani Adewumi came into the global limelight in 2019 after he was discovered and described as a homeless chess genius.
According to the US chess federation, the national chess master title is for any player who reaches a “2200 rating”.
The US body overseeing chess competitions adds: “Less than one percent of rated players hold the title. An Original Life Master is a National Master who played 300 games with a rating [of] over 2200” points amassed from games.
In 2019, Adewunmi, whose family had fled Nigeria for the US over the Boko Haram crisis, made the headlines after winning the 2019 New York chess championship while living in a homeless center on religious asylum.
A GoFundMe page had been set up for him and a total of $254,448 was raised in his name, which helped the chess prodigy and his family to move into an apartment.
Trevor Noah, South African TV host, was thereafter tapped to produce a movie which was to be adapted from three then-yet-to-be published books on how his family escaped terrorism to seek asylum in the US, against all odds.
His father, Kayode Adewumi, said he was beaming ear-to-ear when his fifth-grade son gained the chess master title after winning his latest championship in Fairfield, C.T. on Saturday. He now boasts a chess rating of a tremendous 2223 – whereas a 2200 point is needed to gain the chess master title.
“When he came in first, my heart burst out of my chest,” Adewumi told newsmen in a phone interview on Monday. “I was extremely happy.”
Although Adewumi calls Tani “just a normal kid” who loves watching basketball, he said, “By God’s grace, he wants to be the youngest grandmaster in the world.”
The 10-year-old still has a couple of years to make that happen, with that honour currently belonging to Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, who was 12 years old when he became a grandmaster in 2003.
However, Tani is well on his way.
For the past several years, the young teen has regularly competed across the United States and is even being coached by Georgian chess Grandmaster Giorgi Kacheishvili.
Tani joined his school’s chess program in Manhattan and quickly fell in love with the strategy and the deep thinking involved, his father told Newsmen
But despite the boy going on to win accolades and beating out dozens of other young chess players across New York, his family couldn’t afford stable housing and were temporarily living in a homeless shelter.
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But after Kristof’s New York Times article, people inundated the family’s GoFundMe fundraiser with US$254,000, which partially allowed them to move to better lodging before moving to Port Jefferson, N.Y., where they currently reside.
In a recent Facebook post, Kristof noted that Tani was a prime example of how “talent is universal, but opportunity is not.” He said Tani was extremely fortunate that the shelter was in a school district where there even was a chess program.
In 2019, with the excess funds from the GoFundMe, the family have since set up a trust called the Tanitoluwa Adewumi Foundation, to help other children in similar circumstances.
Last year, the biography “My Name Is Tani” “and I believe in Miracles” based on their life was published and Tani’s story could even be on the silver screen one day after Paramount Pictures won the rights to his life.
Tani’s father and the rest of his family are thrilled to see how far they’ve come, and he hopes his son’s example inspires other refugee families across the world.
Kayode Adewumi, who is now a real estate salesman in Farmingville, N.Y, had three words for other newcomer families: “Keep hope alive.”
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