Tani Earns First IM Norm!

FM Tani Adewumi has earned his first "IM Norm" and with it he inched closer to one of his goals: becoming an international master, one step before grandmaster.

Tani tied for first in his section of the New York Spring Invitational with a score of 7.0/9. More importantly, his performance rating (an indicator of how he did in that event) was over 2450, which is what is needed for a "norm." At the age of 11, he is one of the youngest American players ever to achieve a norm.

Tani holding his "trophy" -- the IM norm certificate. Photo courtesy the Adewumi family.

Despite being the fourth lowest-rated, he finished undefeated and equal to the only grandmaster in the field, and also clear of the two international masters and everyone else! 

As if this wasn't enough, he also gained more than 125 rating points to push him over 2300 FIDE! He needs to get two more norms and 100 rating points to become an IM.

Can you find some of the moves he found to earn the norm? Here's three positions that Tani mastered en route to the big event!

Round 2: Tani is White. How did he break through after ...Nf4?

If you found 1. Nexf6 you are a genius like Tani! Note that you have to use this knight. After 1...Rxf6, Tani is not interested in simply trading two knights for a rook. Instead he finds the amazing deflection 2. Re8! and if 2...Qxe8 then it is mate in two after 3. Qxf6+ Kg8 4. Nxh6#. You can learn more about deflections here like Tani did!

Round 4: Tani is White and "discovers" something a little easier!

We're guessing you played like Tani here with 1. d5! By giving away the pawn, Tani opened up a discovered attack on the bishop on a7. He won that bishop on the next turn, and was able to "free" it even though Black tried ...b6 to trap it.

Round 7: Is Tani able to capture the pawn on c4, or is it a poisoned pawn?

In fact 1. Bxc4 is a great move! You may have seen that Black has many discovered attacks by moving the knight to open the battery on the c-file. The problem is that if 1...Na4 and Black "wins" back the pawn on c3, he enters a really bad pin on his knight. Or if a move like 1...Nxe4, which seems to win back the pawn right away, Tani had planned 2. Nxe4 Qxc4 3. Nxd6 with a winning fork!

If some of those tactics were tricky, then you may not have solved the more than 20,000 puzzle that Tani has! Go do a few dozen puzzles now, or watch this video on how to improve your deep calculation for longer tactics!

Congratulations again to Tani and make sure you tune in to the next episode of Tani Time! for him to talk more about his awesome tournament.