A 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.”
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