8-Year-Old Chess Prodigy vs. Grandmaster

ladies and gentlemen in today's video i want to tell you about the amazing chess prodigy who is tanitolua adiwumi but as he's popularly known around the chess world now you can call him tani he became a sensation in march of 2019 when he won a section of the new york state scholastic championship with five and a half points out of six while he and his family were living at a local homeless shelter in new york city there's a popular video on youtube that was filmed just weeks after that tournament in new york when tani traveled to the st louis chess club and played a couple of grand masters and blitz this grand master in particular is grand master hikaru nakamura and i'm going to analyze that game while i show you the video and then we'll talk more about the amazing chess player that tani is so the players shake hands we have e4 from tani and c5 from hikaru tani plays knight c3 looking at like a close sicilian hikaru responds with d6 but nope tani goes back to an open knight f6 and now pawn to d4 we have a trade in the center and now hikaru has a choice and he goes for the dragon sicilian hey ryan can i bring someone with me at this point someone asked someone if they can bring someone with them it's unclear where but that detail is unimportant tony is going for a thing this seems like a five minute blitz game uh filmed in like uh the behind the scenes room or something of the saint louis chess club tani plays h3 it's the us junior and i believe uh the us senior at that point was going on bishop g7 played by hikaru typical dragon stuff castles the board above the chess board you can see bishop e3 knight c6 and there tani tells hikaru that he looks different on stream than he does in person and uh hikaru asks tani is this what you normally play against the dragon and tani says yeah and they have a laugh hikaru going for psychological warfare uh on the eight-year-old tony plays bishop c4 short castle from hikaru tani trying to tell hikaru subliminally that he's ugly bishop to b3 i'm just kidding i just have to make some sort of comedy here h3 was played to prevent anything from coming to g4 and now hikaru plays the move knight to a5 looking to get this bishop on b3 tanya responds with queen to d2 creating a battery trying to eye bishop h6 not showing hikaru where he's going to castle just yet and hikaru develops his final piece with bishop d7 looking to play b5 potentially rook c8 typical dragon ideas tani swiveling in his chair that's a power move from the youngster anatoly karpov was known to do so as well in his world championship matches tony not even looking at the board he's looking at what's behind the hikaru um maybe looking at the cameraman while top level chess is going on in the screen behind him just next door now tani plays bishop 2h6 with the intention to of course trade off this bishop and potentially start some sort of instigation over here on this side of the board um b5 played by uh by hikaru this can be taken but you of course would lose a defender of your pawn here this is a very common idea and it makes tony go for a think tani solidifies the center with f2 to f3 and hikaru responds with e5 immediately striking hikaru could have taken on h6 to deflect the queen away but the problem is you really don't want your queen to lurk and now tony says wait a minute can't i just take this pawn and he as you see kind of hesitates but ultimately takes hikaru finally snaps off this bishop he kind of didn't really have any reason to take it just yet uh but uh now complications will begin hikaru's also got a looming idea queen h4 check tani does go for that and we see hikaru snap off this move knight takes e4 so now the idea is to go queen h4 check and pick up this bishop which has two attackers on it he's also opened attacks here hikaru not taking it easy on the young player and tani realizes that no matter what he takes back with he's in trouble knight takes e4 hikaru plays queen h4 kind of hesitates for a brief moment tani plays knight back to f2 and now bishop takes h6 is played and hikaru's combination is complete but if i can just pause very quickly here for a moment uh if you look at the board above you you'll notice hikaru hesitated when he played the move queen h4 check uh and uh the title of this youtube video is actually called can you find tani's missed win and i remember i was watching this video which gave me the entire idea to film the video that i'm currently filming and i was like why did hikaru hold the queen there and it's because in this position there's this move g3 a stunning move g3 the knight defends the pawn so now if you were to take with the bishop which is what hikaru did in the game then after this this uh well king d2 bishop b5 uh white is actually slightly better i mean white is uh not up any sort of material and you cannot actually take this because you will get pinned uh but white actually has a small advantage because black's pawn structure is not as great in the center of the board and on the queen side yes white has doubled pawns but actually there are even bigger problems after bishop h6 and it's not the fact that you can trade the queen it's the you have this move so there would be a queen hanging and a bishop hanging in knight here and furthermore if you go for this there is takes takes and the knight jumps into f6 so before kicaru can even take that knight there is knight to f6 so it's actually funny uh hikaru played knight takes e4 uh obviously you know not not not uh when you play uh kind of a kid for example uh particularly one that you know is talented but at this point is rated like 1400 as you can see you're not going to go completely guns blazing all out and when that happens there are moments and i've had this against intermediate students as well there are moments in games that you're like oops and the door is open for them and uh while tony uc played this move very quickly so i just wanted to pause there and show that that is the miss to win in the video uh and obviously tony should uh feel good about himself having that opportunity uh but now from here on out uh there are problems for white because obviously there are two threats so white needs to play a move that will guard this knight uh tani thinks for a little bit and does play queen to d5 the problem is that there is so much pressure here on white's position uh that hikaru doesn't need to rush he can take on b5 he can also just bring a rook to the party and pressure this pawn then you see him do exactly that and here tani plays a move that's is met with a bit of a laugh between the players because he blunders the bishop on the other side of the board bishop takes rook and that happens uh and uh you know rather than resigning he just decides to play it out it's not every day you get to play such a strong player so rook and queen now come in this way tiny drops the knight back he carved plays bishop c6 and it's just good to see kind of how to convert a position like this uh i know some of the stronger viewers watching will be like why is this important this this is silly levy but uh tiny things for a little while maybe 10 15 seconds and ultimately he settles uh on this move uh g3 in this position uh counter-attacking hikaru's queen but ultimately what happens is hikaru can take a queen we have a queen trade and you don't even need to hesitate just bishop takes knight you're up a lot of material knight takes bishop the bishop comes back e3 the good thing here is that the rook is cutting off the king and now at some point you need to realize your material advantage and that material advantage is the rook which is standing far away uh and furthermore you obviously have this skewer so we have rook c1 king e2 rook takes rook and uh king takes bishop from tani ikaro plays f5 a nice structural move disallowing the king from any further escape and now this important move rook to d8 and from this point forward we have what's called the cleanup process we take a couple of things and a yes of course hikaru can promote multiple queens in this position but what he does is he just hunts down tony's king he cuts it off with the two rooks good instructive lesson there for the beginners watching uh tani plays knight back to b1 kikaru takes the pawn so as not to lose his rook and then this very important move to just deliver a sort of ladder checkmate and uh tani ultimately resigns and the players will shake hands when tony plays king to e1 because hikaru has a choice of which checkmate to deliver now this video is named what it's named because obviously uh well tony had a an opportunity earlier when this move queen h4 happened to get a winning advantage but that's very difficult to see and obviously given the moment i don't think that he can be too disappointed with his result so i promised that i would tell you a little bit more about tani and right now is exactly what i'm going to do that so that video that you just saw was filmed in on march 30th 2019 at least that's the upload date on youtube uh so the state scholastic tournament was march 5th and 6th i actually coached some of my students at that very tournament they did not become champions uh they were nowhere as skilled or driven as tani his work ethic is incredible now let's go back a little bit so in 2017 uh tani's family fled nigeria for fear of religious persecution they were they're christian and they filed for religious asylum to the united states when they got to new york city they knew a uh church pastor i believe is the right word and uh he helped them kind of get sort of situated and they lived at this homeless shelter now tani uh managed to get enrolled in ps 116 which is a school on the east side of manhattan and the crazy thing is that i've lived in new york city my entire life so i know ps116 i have taught chess students at ps 116 when i was a teenager and my students when i was teaching played in chess tournaments at ps 116. so i even know their chess coach sean martinez who was tony's first chess coach i played sean martinez when i was a kid and he was a teenager at tournaments in new york city and it's crazy we're both now we both were chess teachers in new york city it's just just that's that's kind of my personal take on it because i know chess in new york city uh and tony was enrolled and had his fees way for the after school program uh at ps116 uh and uh well his teachers you know i have the actual article literally on this monitor and his teacher say that you know he he took to chess uh he did 10 times as many chess puzzles as some of the other students and he did all of this while living at a homeless shelter i mean like when when his family was interviewed in march the they saw him like laying on the floor solving chess puzzles and chess can really be this kind of escape i mean many of you if you've made it this far in the video you you know that chest can be a positive addiction it can also be a negative addiction because it's i mean the spiral is kind of crazy but how many of of of you have gotten through potential you know downs in your mental health or tough times in life by by finding chess during the pandemic right and it's just amazing because it can give you a sense of value and a sense of work and it's it's great to see when tony's story broke and hit the news uh it was incredible they raised the gofundme uh people donated an apartment for his family they donated a car i believe they raised like 200 000 which his family is using uh for for obviously for i mean living but also they started a charity to help students uh and kids in the same spot that tani was in when he was at the shelter which is amazing to see tony was invited on all sorts of talk shows he met uh former president bill clinton and one of the cool things about chess is that he went to the saint louis chess club which is obviously where the chess hall of fame is and he was able to play against hiccaro fabiano caruana and but remember back then tony's rating is 1500 by the way i'm still talking this is all unedited i'm pretty impressed with myself that i can just anyway uh that was 2019 obviously 2020 killed tony's opportunities to play chess because of the pandemic so he played online i've played tani before uh it i won i'm 3-0 but uh i should probably be one win two losses i'll be very honest with you uh but i did want to show you some of tani's other successes and uh tell you that a few weeks ago it's currently 2021 in may tani became a national master so he is 10 years old now at that point he was 8 10 years old and he became a 2200 rated player so he's gained six seven hundred points uh since that initial video which is just which is which is just unbelievable uh this is his statistics page on the us chess um on the us chess federation website so it took tani just 350 tournament games in the u.s chess federation to hit 2200 now i don't know if in 2020 this counts some of the online that he played okay looks like it doesn't looks like he still had an opportunity to compete in late 2020 i know he had to take a very long break it took him 350 games so for comparison ladies and gentlemen uh your humble uh favorite youtuber uh that those two things back to back sound pretty funny it took me about 700 tournament games it took tani half that amount of time to reach that level okay in over-the-board competitive play now one more thing which is amazing about tani uh is he's an exceptionally gifted puzzle rusher in fact tani became quite famous and there's a video of him on youtube also playing hikaru in puzzle rush and tani is frequently around twitch he's been in my chat he very clearly likes icaru and i think he's played hikaru many times maybe even beat him in a blitz game uh which is which is pretty amazing uh but i i mean i figured it would it would kind of be mean to feature only tani vs hikaru games so i'm gonna show you one other game in the future but tani can solve like 50 puzzles in three minutes which is just unbelievable um luckily my survival score is still four points higher than his but i doubt that's going to be the case very long i cannot play tani in three minute puzzle rush survival he is just unbelievable at it uh and uh you know he's just gonna have to grind some of these some of these ratings up a little bit higher as he continues to progress at chess but i wanted to just show you one more game of his to show you just really how strong he is uh this is a game that he played against hans on twitch who's a 28 2900 rated uh blitz player on chess.com now he is a recently minted grandmaster he actually also is not maybe not currently in new york city but he's from new york city and tony is 2100 uh blitz at this point so we have a london with a6 uh the whole point is that it's kind of the job of london white wants to play knight b5 hans just develops his pieces nothing too complex yet players getting their pieces out tani plays h6 a6 and well just goes immediately after hans with this move g5 han uh tani is very aggressive he really likes to attack hans tries to punish tani for kind of overextending so we have take stakes and castles and hans plays very logical move f4 because you are going to open up your rook so you just uh you make a little pawn break here to try to trade punish the other guy for putting panzer out in front of his king which is known as a hook and tani here plays knight takes e5 of course you take back with the f pawn to open up the rook and white is just comfortably better and tries to jump in here with the knight to make a trade queen g4 and we have queen d5 and it looks like tony has stabilized the position uh but here white can play moves like b3 to try to play c4 and kick the queen out most likely black has to respond with b5 then you will play rook c1 c4 but hans chooses not to target this queen and instead focuses on the other side of the board and makes a nice pawn break h2 to h4 which is a very smart move tani has to play the relatively ugly looking move but necessary f6 because again uh if you take well then i'm very happy then i'm gonna take with my pawn and at least my king stays safe maybe we can trade some pieces and get down to an end game hans plays the best move i believe which is uh trying to rip it all open with pawn takes f6 e takes f6 now at this point uh hans plays an inaccuracy and his inaccuracy looks like a decent move uh but the the general rule of thumb is that if you have some sort of attack you do not want to trade your most powerful attacking piece here unquestionably the best move is rook to f5 because what it does is it attacks the queen you're gonna double up you're gonna maintain the pressure this pawn is kind of hard to protect but hans trades the queens because if he doesn't for example if hans plays this then with just one move black is better and that move is f5 and it's very amazing how in a position one pawn push on one square changes everything right so we have queen f5 takes takes and uh black has some problems black has weaknesses tani finds a nice way to give away a pawn but activate his rook so he sacrifices a pawn to gain activity on that file rook c5 and now king to e6 and he's gotten his king out into the end game very bravely right marching his king b4 and very important move i told you about a long time ago f5 trying to activate his bishop hans trades pawns plays rook f1 but now otani again on the momentum he's been moving forward forward forward f4 beautiful move because now the center is falling apart you can play rook takes g5 in this position and attack the bishop but that relinquishes the defense of your c7 bishop and now i take and protect mine so you can't do that so instead of hans plays bishop b6 trying to back up and stop the the the t train right the problem is that i have f take c3 and now i have doubled past pawns like one after the other they're coming and bishop on d4 is hanging so what do you do hans plays rook takes rook rook takes rook and bishop to c5 disconnecting the rook from the bishop but tani now spots a very nice idea b6 reactivating the rook when tani got to play the game on momentum takes takes he was unstoppable he just it was a downhill avalanche right now hans has to play d5 check in order to sacrifice and bring the bishop back and okay it looks like he's very briefly stabilizing but this end game is much better for black because black has all the activity in the end game if material is equal you look at the peace utility we have rook takes a2 bishop takes g5 and now brings in the bishop with check and all he has to do is push his pawn and you bet that he did exactly that hans plays king to g3 e2 rookie one but you're just not fast enough and after this that's it the only thing that hans can do is push his jeep on this pawn's not going anywhere and we have this this but it's not about the b-pawn it's not about the b-pawn it's about this you have to invest in your greatest asset and tani realizes that he's just got rook a1 coming and so hans plays king f2 and resigns because rook a1 rook f1 you're just not quick enough well actually rookie one i suppose is even worse because you would just be promoting a queen so maybe maybe hans could have here considered something like bishop h4 uh with the intention to well i guess actually it doesn't work at all anyway because yikes this is just not good there would be some situation you can sacrifice the bishop for the pawn but it doesn't look like you actually have a way to do it after king c4 king d3 and this and for example i suppose that you can delay rook a1 with bishop f6 but it doesn't really matter because i will just play rook c2 or rook d2 even better rook d1 so tani uh hasn't just beaten hikaru uh in bliss he's also beaten hans he's beaten some other players he should have beaten me full disclosure uh and i think only great things await him it's amazing that in that video he was 750 points lower than he is now and he didn't even have a lot of chances to play in 2020 so great stuff from him we can only expect great things many of you probably know who tony is but i did want to share this story and trust me chess is the great equalizer you don't need a big budget to play chess you need the most basic of chess sets raggedy chessboard and some pieces and anybody from any part of the world any financial situation can learn and be good and i'm going to tell you all very honestly in my time of teaching chess at scholastics it was the public school kids uh that worked harder than the private school kids and uh had the chip on their shoulder and uh well you know i'm the son of immigrants so i i i know a little bit about the immigrant mentality um and uh it's just just great to see so i only want to wish tony great things and we can expect great things in the future and probably some years from now we'll be making recaps about him at at those top level tournaments so wanted to share this feel good story with you all and i will see you in the next video

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 387,056

Rating: 4.9649496 out of 5

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, tani, tani chess, gmhikaru, gmhikaru twitch, gmhikaru speedrun, hikaru premove magnus carlsen, hikaru, hikaru chess, hikaru blitz, hikaru nakamura, hikaru nakamura blitz, hikaru nakamura magnus carlsen, tani adewumi, tanitoluwa adewumi, tani adewumi chess, tani adewumi chess player, tani chess player, tani chess prodigy, gmhikaru blitz

Id: VOn1BIoDn30

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021