Tanitoluwa Adewumi

15-year-old Tanitoluwa Emmanuel “Tani” Adewumi of New York meets the definition of a chess prodigy. He won the 2019 K-3 New York State chess championship at the age of 8 after having played the game for only a year. This is an even more remarkable achievement when one learns he did this while living in a homeless shelter with his family who moved from Nigeria to escape threatened violence by the terrorist organization Boko Haram.

Tani earned his National Master at ten and became an International Master at 14. The past year he has been steadily improving and made his first Grandmaster norm this past February at the St. Louis Masters, scoring 6 from 9 for a performance rating of 2635.

Tani will be making his debut in the U.S. Junior Championship.