Sunday, May 9, 2021

the next Bobby Fischer?

 


chess prodigy, at age 13 Bobby Fischer won a game which was dubbed "The Game of the Century". At age 14 he became the youngest ever U.S. Chess Champion, and at 15 he became both the youngest grandmaster (GM) up to that time and the youngest candidate for the World Championship.

 

At age 20, Fischer won the 1963/64 US Championship with 11 wins in 11 games, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. He won the 1970 Interzonal Tournament by a record 3½-point margin and won 20 consecutive games in the last seven rounds of the Interzonal and in the Candidates Matches, the latter including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps. When the first official FIDE rating list was published in July 1971, Fischer was the highest-rated player by a wide margin.

Fischer won the World Chess Championship in 1972, defeating Boris Spassky of the USSR, in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, it attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.

 

In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, chess's international governing body, over one of the conditions for the match. Under FIDE rules, this resulted in Soviet GM Anatoly Karpov, who had won the qualifying Candidates' cycle, being named the new world champion by default. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer

 I was just a few years out of college when Fischer became the World Chess Championship. Inspired by his success, I bought his book, and learned how to play chess. As of today, I have not played chess in years, and my chess board and pieces disappeared YEARS ago.

Could anyone possibly be better than Bobby Fischer? The answer is yes, and the individual involved may surprise you.





Once upon a time a 7-year-old refugee living in a homeless shelter sat down at a chess board in school and learned how to play. His school then agreed to his mom’s plea to waive fees for him to join the chess club.

The boy wasn’t any good at first. His initial chess rating was 105, barely above the lowest possible rating, 100.

But the boy, Tanitoluwa Adewumi — better known as Tani — enjoyed chess as an escape from the chaos of the homeless shelter, and his skills progressed in stunning fashion. After little more than a year, at age 8, he won the New York State chess championship for his age group, beating well-coached children from rich private schools.

This month, as a fifth grader, Tani cruised through an in-person tournament in Connecticut open to advanced players of all ages and won every game. He emerged with a chess rating of 2223, making him a national master.

At 10 years 7 months and 28 days, Tani became the 28th-youngest person ever to become a chess master in the United States, according to John Hartmann of U.S. Chess. Tani had one of the fastest rises, for he began playing chess only at the relatively late age of 7. And he’s aiming higher.

“I want to be the youngest grandmaster,” he told me. “I want to have it when I’m 11 or 12.” The youngest person ever to become a grandmaster, Sergey Karjakin, achieved that honor at 12 years 7 months.

Tani has watched the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” about an orphan girl and outsider who proves a chess prodigy. “I definitely did see myself in it,” he said.

He may see himself more directly on the screen. A book Tani and his parents wrote about their journey has been optioned for a feature film by Paramount Pictures. The script is being written by Steven Conrad, who wrote “The Pursuit of Happyness,” and Trevor Noah is to produce.

The family fled Nigeria because of fears of Boko Haram, the terrorist group, according to his father, Kayode Adewumi, who now is a real estate agent with Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

When Tani won the state championship, several private schools offered him places, but the family decided to keep him in the public school that had nurtured him. The Adewumis also used the $250,000 contributed by readers to start a foundation that helps other homeless people and refugees.

The larger lesson of Tani’s story is simple: Talent is universal, while opportunity is not. In Tani’s case, everything came together. His homeless shelter was in a school district that had a chess club, the school waived fees, he had devoted parents who took him to every practice, he won the state tournament (by a hair) and readers responded with extraordinary generosity.

But opportunity shouldn’t require a perfect alignment of the stars. Winning state chess tournaments is not a scalable solution to child homelessness.

 We need to support all children — including those who aren’t chess prodigies. That requires policy as well as philanthropy, so let me note: President Biden’s proposed investments in children, such as child tax credits and universal pre-K, would revolutionize opportunity for all struggling children.

Maybe we can be inspired by the wisdom of America’s newest chess master. When asked how he feels when he loses, Tani said “when you lose, you have made a mistake, and that can help you learn,” he told me. “I never lose. I learn.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/sunday/homeless-chess-champion-tani-adewumi.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage







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