ChessKid.com's Incredible 2019!

Happy belated holidays to all of our readers today! We can’t believe it’s January 3rd. WHAT a year it has been for ChessKid.

Since 2019 is coming to a close, we thought it’d be fun to usher in the new decade with a recap of all things ChessKid. See below for some of this year’s craziest moments: tournaments, prodigies, grandmasters, and more!

The Great Guinness World Record Attempt

Who could forget ChessKid’s Guinness World Record attempt for the world’s largest online chess tournament! We couldn’t have done it without one of our good friends: the world’s #1 female player, GM Judit Polgar! Check it out: we even made the news!

More than 8,000 kids competed worldwide in the qualifiers, and a few lucky kids won a chance to play blitz with FunMasterMike and Judit. In the finals, two ChessKids finished at the top with 9.0/10. Big congratulations to NiceGiantAnt, the champion of the event. He won the coveted first prize: a private lesson with Judit! We’re waiting on Guinness to evaluate our results for the record, so stay tuned!

New ChessKid programming!

Speaking of staying tuned, you might have noticed our new ChessKid shows streaming on Twitch.tv/chess and chess.com/tv.

First up: FunMaster and the TiCher (teacher? Get it? Sorry, we won’t explain jokes anymore). This show pits FunMasterMike against our new friend and co-host Tihon Chernyaev, a 9-year-old prodigy from the Ukraine. Watch them compete against each other, comment on each other’s games, and play hand & brain.

Our second pièce de résistance of ChessKid programming is Beat FunMasterMike, where—you guessed it—ChessKids try to beat him (and occasionally, they do!). Check our Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram pages for announcements about air dates. You can also vote for who you think the winner will be and find the best clips and recaps. Look out, though! These shows will also soon pop up on our new YouTube page: home to exclusive free lessons, flashbacks (hey, Shark Tank!) and more. Subscribe so you don’t miss a video!

The Year of Vishy Anand

This year, we were thrilled to work with GM Vishy Anand, legendary icon and five-time world champion. Vishy works with us to promote scholastic chess in India! Anand is ChessKid’s Chief Mentor of India, and has collaborated with ChessKid to meet tournament winners and make gold memberships available to rural schools in need. Vishy updates coming soon from ChessKid India!

Legendary ChessKids

Lastly, we wanted to mention two shining ChessKid stars this year. The first shout-out goes to Lucas Yang, of New York City’s Speyer Legacy School. He is now the best kindergarten chess player in the United States after playing a perfect 7-0 tournament at nationals!

Next up is Tani Adewumi: he won the hearts of chess players worldwide after popping up in the New York Times. A Nigerian refugee, Tani overcame adversity and homelessness to become the New York State chess champion for his age group, beating numerous private school contestants despite only having learned chess the previous year.

We love working with Tani. Watch him analyze his blitz game with U.S. Champ Hikaru Nakamura on ChessKid.com. (He also played FunMasterMike!) Thanks to a fundraising effort, Tani and his family now live in an apartment in New York City. They gave most of the money to other African immigrant families through the newly-created Tanitoluwa Adewumi Foundation.

Happy New Year

We want to thank all of the coaches, kids, and parents that make ChessKid what it is today. ChessKid is more than a learning tool: it is a community, built on a foundation of safety, education, family—and of course, fun! Thank you for spending 2019 with us, and we hope you join us as we discover what the new decade has to offer, together.