Inside Story: A Long Time Coming

Editor's note: this story first appeared in the November 2025 issue of Chess Life magazine. Consider becoming a US Chess member for more content like this — access to digital editions of both Chess Life and Chess Life Kids is a member benefit, and you can receive print editions of both magazines for a small add-on fee.

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Brewington Hardaway breaks through to the GM title.

Imagine waiting 25 years to see a dream come true.

GM Brewington Hardaway (Photo by Caroline King)

When I became the first African-American in history to attain the GM title, in 1999, the expectation was that there would be many more to quickly follow. It still boggles the mind that it took this long before another Black person here in the United States would replicate the feat. However, it finally came to pass last year in the form of Brewington Hardaway, a 15-year-old prodigy from the Bronx who never would have taken up chess in the first place if not for a funny twist of fate.

Brewington, now 16, is the youngest in a family of four. As luck would have it, his mother, Ikuko, enrolled one of his sisters for chess club when he was 5. Brew’s parents decided that it would be easier to leave him in the chess club with his sister than take him home and then have to return to pick her up.
“The story goes that my sister Noni signed up for chess, but didn’t really like it,” Brew remembered during our Zoom call. “But the cost was $150, and my mom said that she had already spent the money, so my sister had to do it. If Noni had quit chess, I don’t know if I would have ever played chess. Probably not.”

While Noni would soon come to enjoy chess, eventually reaching the top 20 in the country for her age group among girls, the effect chess was having on her baby brother would lead to the discovery of a world-class talent.

“I just sat over in a corner of the room drawing and doing homework,” Brew recalls. “Every so often, I would look up to watch the big screen with all the puzzles and see the kids playing, and I started to gain interest. I eventually asked how this game works, and ever since, I’ve been hooked.”

Hardaway with Coach Chris Johnson (Photo by Caroline King)

Within about a month, the coach of the club, Chris Johnson, began to understand that the young boy wasn’t an average kid.

“As a kindergartner, he beat everyone in the club, including the fourth graders,” said Coach Johnson, an expert who now runs a citywide program in NYC called Project Pawn. “By the time he got to first grade, he started beating a few of the coaches too. He could barely tie his shoelaces!”

Johnson recalled the moment he knew Brewington was special: “I showed him a bunch of lines in the Sicilian, and then months later he still remembered everything. I never had to show him the same thing twice.” At age 5, Brewington won the New York K-1 championship, and Johnson remembers that while “everyone else was celebrating, he was still going over the games he had just played, still trying to improve.”

‘She thought I was lying’

Brew had a massive breakthrough just two years later when, at just 7 years old and rated 1537, he defeated IM Jay Bonin, a New York City legend.

“I played my only opening then — the Benko,” Brewington recalls. (Johnson says that, coincidentally, they had just gone over the line a week before.) “I remember I hit Jay with a nice tactic and won two pieces, so he resigned. When I told my mom I’d won, she thought I was lying.”

Coach Johnson remembers seeing a photo of the winning scoresheet that Ikuko had texted him: “I was shocked that he had beaten someone so strong so early on in his development, but I wasn’t really surprised, if that makes sense. This is a kid who used to fall asleep at night at his laptop while going over chess. I told his mom that one day soon he would be a GM.”

(In a curious twist of fate, Coach Johnson’s very first coaches were Kasaun Henry, Charu Robinson, and Daniel Gray, who were members of the Raging Rooks, a team I coached to a national championship title back in 1991).

One would have expected such a victory to motivate the youngster to work extremely hard to get even better. However, it was a few more years before he would take chess seriously. “Honestly, back then, I didn’t even study chess,” Brewington says with a smirk. “I just played for fun. I barely did anything outside of the school chess club — no openings, only puzzles. … I didn’t even know what the IM title meant or even what a FIDE rating was. … I just played chess because I enjoyed it.”

Three years later, at age 10 and still not studying consistently, Brewington gained the title of national master, defeating Bonin once again as well as other highly rated players along the way. Even these results hadn’t yet been enough to spark the singular focus a young talent needs to get to the highest levels. That would come from another twist of fate, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone into lockdown, prompting him to pursue the game full-blast.

That was where he realized “I just loved to play. Whenever I saw a nice tactic, it made me happy. Something about all the different possibilities, cool tricks, positional ideas — it always made it interesting for sure.”

Setbacks and stepping up

Two years of secluded study plus work with a new coach, GM Gregory Kaidanov, saw a period of accelerated growth. Now he was tearing up the New York scene, and it was time to go outside of familiar territory to tournaments around the country.

Hardaway with GM Gregory Kaidanov (Photo courtesy Valeria Kaidanov)

The next big breakthrough came at what many would consider a moment of personal failure: In the last round of the 2022 SPICE Cup, Brewington needed only a draw to secure an IM norm, he made a crucial mistake that cost him the game. However, instead of hanging his head in defeat, he was able to reframe it as a positive outcome.

“Losing the game was tough for sure,” he recalls. “I was not really happy, obviously. But at that point I realized that norms were possible. … I hadn’t come close before. To get close like that was definitely motivational.”

That mindset helped catapult him at the beginning of 2023 when he scored two IM norms in back-to-back tournaments in New York. He also came agonizingly close to the 2400 rating required to secure the title by reaching a live rating of 2399.4! The third norm followed in July of that year at the World Open, but it would be November before the elusive 2400 rating would be finally achieved — at the U.S. Masters, in Charlotte, he gained 62 rating points, the IM title, and his first GM norm in one fell swoop.

With his confidence soaring, it now seemed like the wind was at his back. 2024 kicked off with a bang when, in his very first tournament of the year, he sprinted to a 5-0 start and coasted with four draws to finish with a 2668 performance rating, a half-point over the GM norm. However, the next several months saw only decent results, with a modest rating boost, and then a depressing setback at the U.S. Junior in St. Louis.

Hardaway at the U.S. Junior Championship (Photo courtesy SLCC/Crystal Fuller)

“I had three completely winning positions that ended in a loss and two draws,” he says. “That was really tough for me. If I had won all those games I would have tied for first. I could see I had the middlegame strengths to make the GM title, but my conversion and focus needed to improve. In the critical moments, in time pressure; that’s when I stumbled. I realized that I had to try to not overthink things, to manage my time better and have more self-confidence.”

Those realizations stayed with him as he took aim at a summer tournament in Barcelona, Spain. After a modest start, he picked up steam and then found himself face to face with one more major obstacle to clear the last hurdle.

“It’s funny because in the second-to-last round, I thought I had to make a draw against a random 2330 to get my final norm,” he recalls. Instead, he ended up with Black against German GM Alexander Donchenko, who had a peak rating of 2684. “But I told myself that if I could draw a player of that level with Black, then I really deserve the title. I ended up playing a 99% accuracy game and got the draw.”

A little more than two months later, Brewington eclipsed the 2500 mark at the New York Fall GM Invitational, finishing with an undefeated 6 out of 9. In doing so, he cemented his place in history as the second (and by far the youngest) African American to secure the GM title. It was a relief to him and pure joy to those of us who had followed his quest. Though the journey seemed a bit drawn out, he actually secured his three IM and three GM norms in just 21 months.

Hardaway — Photos courtesy Ana Vivas (L), by Mark Cielinkowski, and by Caroline King (R)

Brewington credits Kaidanov for helping him navigate the twists and turns of the journey. (Coincidentally, Kaidanov was my coach when I attained the GM title as well.) As Brew put it, “The GM title was really all thanks to him. During all these ups and downs, he was really supportive. He let me know that bad things happen to everyone. He let me know I had all the tools I needed to become a top player. That was really good to hear.”

As for what it means to be an African American in a sport where there is so little representation, Brew, as he often does, put on a positive spin.

“I just see it as an opportunity to inspire kids from a similar background. There are not many others besides my good friend, Tani [IM Tani Adewumi]. I think there’s a lot of potential out there; we just need kids to have motivation and inspiration to reach their potential.”

What’s next?

With so much talent and a fairly rapid rise, he speaks about the future with a blend of high aspirations and pragmatic realism. His next stop: Get to 2600 in the next two years, before high school is over.

“I feel like I still have a lot to improve, of course. I don’t think my rating shows the work I’ve been putting in. … I think over time if I keep working as I am, the rating will start to show. I’m just gonna keep training, then the results will come. I’m not too worried about it.”

Photo by Caroline King

As for one day becoming the World Champion, he simply replied: “Isn’t that everyone’s dream?”

Nowadays, he spends at least three to four hours a day working on openings, calculation training, and a bit of the endgame, while additionally using blitz to practice the opening lines he’s been learning. He balks at the idea of studying all day long like some of his peers.

“I personally can’t see myself focusing for eight to 10 hours on chess. I like to do other things like going to the gym to be in shape and watching NBA basketball. That’s also important for tournaments. There’s other things in life to do other than chess. I try to be well-balanced, but when I work on chess, I try to be really focused and maximize the time I have.”