Andy Woodward is the top U12 player in the world

Tanitoluwa Adewumi is making headlines these days, having won the 2022 Summer New York Invitational. And rightly so, as his trajectory now draws close comparison to the stellar rise of Abhimanyu Mishra, who became the youngest GM in the world at the age of 12 years, 4 months, 25 days.

However, it is another US player that is the highest rated U12 chess player in the world. Andy Woodward is now rated 2486, which puts him close to 100 ELO points ahead of his closest competitor FM Vaclav Finek. The July rating list brought 97,4 ELO to Andy Woodward, getting him ever so close to the 2500 ELO mark.

If Andy Woodward crosses 2500 ELO, that would make him the youngest in that category. Just yesterday a fellow American Christopher Yoo became the youngest in the top 20 junior list. The average rating of the top 20 American junior players is 2487,6 ELO, here is the full list according to the July ratings.

Top 20 US juniors (July FIDE rating list)

1. GM Hans Moke Niemann – ELO 2688, age 19 (all news here)
2 GM Awonder Liang – ELO 2625, age 19 (all news here)
3 GM Abhimanyu Mishra – ELO 2553, age 13 (all news here)
4 GM Christopher Woojin Yoo ELO 2550, age 15 (all news here)
5 GM Brandon Jacobson ELO 2544, age 19 (all news here)
6 GM Praveen Balakrishnan – ELO 2517, age 20
7 GM Andrew Hong – ELO 2504, age 18
8 IM David Brodsky – ELO 2496, age 20
9 IM Balaji Daggupati – ELO 2488, age 17
10 FM Andy Woodward – ELO 2486, age 12
11 IM Justin Wang – ELO 2469, age 17
12 IM Jason Liang – ELO 2460, age 15
13 IM Anthony He – ELO 2443, age 17
14 IM Arthur Guo – ELO 2438, age 16
15 IM Eddy Tian – ELO 2430, age 16
16 FM Kirk Ghazarian – ELO 2426, age 16
17 FM Robert Shlyakhtenko – ELO 2422, age 17
18 IM Carissa Yip – ELO 2416, age 18
19 FM Evan Park – ELO 2399, age 15
20 FM Maximillian Lu – ELO 2398, age 17