Team Envy chess sensations Alexandra and Andrea Botez were left stunned while playing chess in New York, as they were both comprehensively beaten by 10-year-old prodigy Tanitoluwa Adewumi.
With the meteoric rise of chess in 2020, fueled by the hit Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit and the game’s domination of Twitch, sisters Alexandra and Andrea Botez became one of streaming’s most iconic duos.
Currently boasting over 450k YouTube subscribers and almost 900k Twitch followers, both siblings are remarkably good chess players: Andrea is ranked at 260 in the chess.com world rankings, while Alexandra currently sits at 256th.
However, while challenging chess hustlers in New York City, they were faced with their most skilled opponent yet: ten-year-old chess master Tanitoluwa Adewumi. And neither sister could match the up-and-comer’s insane skill.
First up was Andrea, who lost after she randomly decided to gambit her queen, allowing Adewumi to snap it up and take the win. However, Andrea refused to admit her loss was legitimate: “I did it for the stream,” she said.
But Alexandra faired no better, coming unstuck inside three minutes against her opponent as he used his queen to checkmate her.
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Alexandra tried twice more to get at least one win over Adewumi, and tensions were high after he claimed the second game. Alex did keep her cool, and took a win of her own the game after as the series finished 2-1 in Adewumi’s favor.
Adewumi is no normal chess player, however. Born in Nigeria, his family emigrated to the US in 2017 after being driven out of their country due to religious tensions. In 2019, he won the K-3 New York State chess championship while he and his family were living in a homeless shelter.
And in May this year, he became 28th-youngest chess master in history, and aspires to become the youngest-ever chess Grandmaster, overtaking a then-13-year-old Samuel Sevian. In fact, movie studio Paramount Pictures already plan to make a film about his life.
Either way, beating talented chess players like the Botez sisters is no mean feat, and it’ll be interesting to see if Adewumi goes on to become the record-breaking player he aspires to be.
