An 8-year-old Nigerian refugee Tanitoluwa Adewunmi who is living in New York has won the Chess Championship according to reports from chess.com
According to the source, Tanitoluwa was seven years old when his parents fled from Nigeria following the insecurity from Boko Haram.
He was enrolled into a local elementary school, P.S. 116 located in Manhattan’s Kips Bay/Murray Hill neighborhood. There, a part-time chess teacher at the school taught him to play.
His mother wrote to the school that her son was interested in joining the Chess Club but she had no money to pay, as they are currently homeless.
Russell Makofsky who is the program director of Impact Coaching Network, which organizes chess lessons in the school, decided to waive the fees. A year later, the boy has a USCF rating of 1473 and is #27 in America for eight-year-olds. (Full disclosure: ChessKid.com is used by all Impact Coaching Network chess students.)
On March 9 and 10 2019, Tani participated in the New York State Championship. He won the category for children of his age, kindergarten to third grade, with five wins and one draw.
“I want to be the youngest grandmaster,” he told the New York Times
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