Tactics Tuesday: FIDE World Rapid & Blitz, Pt. 2 (The Kids Are Alright)

This week's Tactics Tuesday continues a multi-week feature on the 2024 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships, held December 26 through 31 in New York. Our coverage of the rapid and blitz events focused on the winners, but several dozen Americans competed and many gained rating and delivered some nice upsets. So, we'll be taking a look at their games for the next few weeks! 

This week, we focus on a trio of Americans who competed in their first-ever FIDE Rapid & Blitz Championships. GM Andy Woodward (14), GM-Elect Brewington Hardaway (15), and FM Tanitoluwa "Tani" Adewumi (14) should be familiar names to many of our readers by this point, but this was still a bit of a global coming out party for the trio.

The future is bright for US Chess at the @FIDE_chess World Rapid Championship! The combined age of the three players in this photo is 43!

Best of luck to @IMBrewChess, GM Andy Woodward, and @TaniAdewumi. Photo by @hartmannchess pic.twitter.com/sdf3AWvGM9

— US Chess (@USChess) December 26, 2024

With limited exposure to FIDE-rated blitz and, especially, rapid events, the ratings gains from this trio were astronomical, including +99 for Adewumi in rapid, +108 for Woodward in blitz, and +229 for Hardaway in rapid. But nobody would accuse Hardaway (e.g.) of being rated 2181, despite what his official FIDE rapid rating suggested. So, a better guide to their performances comes from their performance ratings. In rapid and blitz, respectively: Adewumi's performance was rated as 2589/2471, Hardaway's at 2603/2580, and Woodward's at 2468/2686. Not bad!

Enjoy a few highlights from the trio below. More puzzles will come out tomorrow in the Wednesday Workout, and another batch from this trio will grace these pages next week!

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Download our printable worksheet, or solve along with our interactive study.