Tani Adewumi is now a chess master | Hacker News Reader

Tani Adewumi is now a chess master

nytimes.com

61 pointsDangeranger32 comments

Besides his age, the main reason for this story is probably the fact that he is a homeless teenager and that it is very rare that kids with such a background excel. He cannot be the only one who is obviously highly gifted, it is a tragedy that these children are deprived by the system to be sufficiently empowered and thus sustainably break the cycle of poverty.

This, and the fact that california is planning to eliminate or drastically reduce the gifted education program in calculus in the name of equity!, which essentially will deprive especially gifted poor kids of even the slightest chance to get noticed, makes me sad and incredibly angry at the same time.

Source?

He is not homeless, search for 250,000 in this very article.

The first sentence in the article is:

> 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.

He may not be homeless now but he certainly was.

If you're gifted/have qualities that will enable you for success, I struggle to see how not taking advanced calculus will be to your detriment, or affect your ability to be noticed.

Ramanujan read a bunch of textbooks. He certainly did not have the luxury of advanced calculus courses (which isn't even a good representation of research mathematics). He's one of the greatest mathematical geniuses of all time.

Someone with 1-in-1000 aptitude might be considered gifted.

Ramanujan was more like 1 in a billion.

Do you honestly believe that two kids with the same raw talent, one growing up in the projects and one attending private school in upstate New York, have the same chances of being future Fields Medalists? The same principle applies at a smaller scale to the availability of advanced classes in high school or at any level.

Ramanujan is considered exceptional precisely because of his background. He absolutely would have had more prominence and pushed the field much farther with the right resources at a young age.

Fair point. I was specifically comparing "regular" stream calculus vs a special "gifted" class (in the elitist, "my parents have more money" sense) ; I see now you were thinking more of "a subsidized opportunity for people in disadvantaged situations to be exposed to higher level mathematics", in which case, I agree with you.

He's not a teenager, he's 10yo.

An inspiring story, but the writer makes a thought-provoking point:

"Winning state chess tournaments is not a scalable solution to child homelessness."

It's a pity that needs to be highlighted, but it's a reminder of how complicated the problem of homelessness is.

Doesn’t seem that thought provoking. Winning chess tournaments isn’t a scalable solution to any problem.

I think what struck me was the juxtaposition of how well it worked as a solution for Tani's situation, compared to how poorly it would work in general.

No one would be surprised to hear that this solution doesn't scale, but the thoughts that it provokes in me are questions like "How does society produce outcomes that are nearly as good, but which can help more than just one person?"

Often there is an 80:20 approach, or the hard part is going from helping zero people to helping one person, but there doesn't seem like there's any way to adapt the success here to other instances of the same problem.

In fact, the magnitude of the success here could even be a distraction from more scalable solutions, either because people think that all such stories must have a happy ending, or that the only people who deserve such a positive outcome are those who are lucky enough to have rare talents.

What makes homelessness complicated as a problem? It seems like there are many straightforward solutions to it from a government policy perspective - pairing rent control with welfare, building more housing tenements, and in general building out a social safety net. In what way are these solutions insufficient?

Many people on the street have mental health issues. Yes, just having more housing would go a long way, but many choose to live on the street rather than deal with rules about drugs or caring for the housing.

Also rent control keeps the lucky few in their home, but doesn’t get people off the street.

Homelessness is not a single problem but a manifestation of at least half a dozen different underlying problems, including mental illness, substance abuse, housing policy, and personal choices. It's very, very complicated.

Source: I spent four years hanging out with homeless people and made a documentary film about the experience:

http://graceofgodmovie.com/

This kid beat Hikaru Nakamura in puzzle rush once when 9 years old:

https://youtu.be/j-pePy_1_Ts?t=362

Hikaru is the top rated Blitz player in the world:

https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_blitz

> Told that Tani needed a top chess coach to develop, the family scrimped and hired a grandmaster, Giorgi Kacheishvili, to coach Tani three times a week.

Honest question, could you be an effective chess coach if you're not a better chess player than the student?

[Edit] Tani has a rating of 2223 and Giorgi's rating is 2582, so it appears Giorgi is better

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

Not a very good chess player but I'd imagine it's a similar phenomenon to any sports coach. Tani clearly has an incredible ability that his coach can help unlock. EDIT: This is a really good question and I like these answers - unsure why OP is being downvoted!

At a low level, obviously no, you can't. At a professional level, you are more of a sparring partner than a teacher. Maybe you're an expert of a certain opening or endgame, or you're trying to identify specific weaknesses in someone else's game.

Also when chess players reach those much higher levels, they usually have a team helping them out. A combination of even 2 lower ranked players can very easily be better than a single higher rated chess player.

1. Tani is rapidly moving up the ranks. He's only 10. Presumably the rating difference was much larger just a few months ago.

2. 300 points is still quite a large rating difference.

3. In many disciplines the best practitioners are often not the best coaches. You might speculate that being the very best and most talented would make a worse coach since the struggle to increasing levels was easier.

4. Even Tiger Woods had a coach at his peak.

Being a good coach isn't really about "uploading" existing knowledge, but a lot more like being a good manager. The role has more to do with things like maintaining good discipline and habits, keeping you motivated and focused on your objective, organizing your schedule, identifying key areas for improvement, being on the lookout for opportunities, so on so forth...

It might be different for chess, simply because chess is theoretically completely solvable, but there isn’t a single endeavor in which a coach is better than the player they are coaching (or else they would still be playing!).

a lot of supergms have coaches and they are not as strong as them over the board.

Local boy makes good (I am from both Nigeria and Long Island).

Archive link: http://archive.today/2021.05.08-195117/https://www.nytimes.c...

This may be a better link for this event.

https://new.uschess.org/news/tani-adewumi-national-master-ag...

Tani has also had a number of training sessions with Peter Svidler. Svidler has been in the world elite for a couple of decades and won the Russian Championship 8 times. He is also a Hearthstone streamer @polborta.

chess24 sponsored by CoChess produced the "Training with Tani" video series, where Tani was paired up with Svidler.

The first one is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to5_8zpjSCc

Hey, I just heard about him on GothamChess. Good for him!

Just watched Searching for Bobby Fischer the other night...

chess main please, the NYT is behind the times.

Now we all know who had money to spend on this newspaper.

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