Tunde Onakoya
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 October 1994 Ikorodu, Nigeria |
| Chess career | |
| Country | Nigeria |
| Peak rating | 2197 (July 2016) |
Tunde Onakoya (born 6 October 1994) is a Nigerian chess player and coach, who holds the Guinness World Record for the longest marathon chess game.[1][2][3][4] As the founder and convener of Chess in Slums Africa,[5][6][7] he has organised a number of interventions for children across slums in Lagos state including Majidun (Ikorodu), Makoko and recently, Oshodi.
Onakoya learned to play chess at a barber's shop in a slum in Ikorodu, Lagos, where he grew up.[8] Being unable to pay for his secondary school, his mother offered to work for a school as a cleaner in exchange for his school fees.[9][10] He would later be ranked as the number 13 chess player in Nigeria.[10]
Onakoya got a diploma in computer science at Yaba College of Technology where he was a gold medalist representing the school in Nigeria Polytechnic Games and also at the RCCG Chess Championship. He has also won the National Friends of Chess and the Chevron Chess Open.[10]
Onakoya was featured in CNN African Voices.[11][12]
Onakoya is a board member of the New York City-based non-profit The Gift of Chess.[13]
On 20 April 2024, Onakoya broke the world chess marathon record in New York, United States. He played for over 60 consecutive hours.[14]
Chess in Slums Africa
To Tunde, Chess is more than a game, it gives him his constant identity: “Finding chess gave me something. It gave me an identity, an intellectual one, and it made me believe that I could also be intellectually inclined, and it made me believe that I could also be a thinker. That through just this game, I could find my place in the world again,” said Onakoya on his discovery of Chess during a speaking event in Germany.[15]
In September 2018,[16] Chess in Slums Africa started as a volunteer driven non-profit organization that aims to empower young ones in impoverished communities through chess.[17][18]
Chess in Slums Africa partnered with Chess.com in September 2020 as an educational tool for classrooms, chess clubs, and parents.[18]
As of June 2021, Chess in Slums Africa had trained over 200 children and got lifelong scholarships for 20 of them.[19]
In May 2021, Ferdinand, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy won the chess tournament in Makoko.[20][21][22] He later met and competed with Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State.[23]