The U.S. Cadet Championship is an annual invitational event which pits the eight strongest American players aged 16 and under against each other in a round-robin tournament. The first tournament was run in 1986 at the Manhattan Chess Club, where Alex Sherzer became the first champion. Since then, the tournament has taken place at a multitude of venues across the country – including Washington D.C., Nashville, TN, Rockville, MD, and Schaumburg, IL. This year's tournament took place in Lisle, IL.

 

This years competitors pictured with the organizers(Danial Wilson and Bill Buklis), courtesy of Danial Wilson

 

The 2024 Cadet Championship took place late last month from June 20 - June 23. This event featured two IMs, Bach Ngo and Ryo Chen, as well as 6 FMs: Eric Liu, Tanitoluwa Adewumi, Erick Zhao, Isaac Wang, Ryan Sun, and Zoey Tang. For pairing purposes, shortly before the beginning of the first round, playing cards – ace through eight – were drawn to seed the players by lot number rather than by rating.

 

The event was won outright with an impressive 6/7 score by the 13-year old prodigy Tanitoluwa (Tani) Adewumi, who finished last place in the same tournament the previous year. Nevertheless, he started off strong into the competition by defeating one of the strongest players in the first round:

 

This impressive performance has caused Tani’s FIDE rating to come within 20 points of the IM rating threshold of 2400, for which he recently earned his final norm. Along with the recognition of winning the tournament, he can add the $1,000 prize and $10,000 scholarship( $5,000 from the Dewain Barber Foundation and $5,000 from US Chess) to the college/university of his choice to his ever-growing list of awards.

 

Below is another of his wins from the tournament, highlighting tactical masterclass with an accuracy of 97%:

 

 

Tani accepting his award, courtesy of Danial Wilson

Congratulations to Tani for winning this event and congratulations to Danial Wilson at Wilson Chess and Bill Buklis King Registration for their third successful year of running this event and best of luck to them in the future.

 

Final standings – ranked according to lot number, courtesy of US Chess

All games from the event can be reviewed on Lichess.