Eight-year-old Brit Bodhana Sivanandan makes chess history

An eight-year-old British schoolgirl has “entered chess history” after an outstanding performance at a blitz championship in Croatia, where she beat a chess master more than 30 years her senior.

Bodhana Sivanandan, from Harrow, northwest London, put on a “superlative” performance, totalling a “remarkable” 8.5/13 against a field of “highly rated grandmasters, international masters and experts”, said the Financial Times.

The blitz tournament, which took place in Zagreb, saw a “mammoth” entry of 555 players, including 48 grandmasters and 50 international masters.

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In the penultimate round of the tournament, Sivanandan beat her first international master, 39-year-old Lorin D’Costa, England’s women’s chess coach, before drawing with 54-year-old two-time Romanian champion Vladislav Nevednichy in the final round.

It made her the “youngest player to avoid defeat against a grandmaster in a competitive game”, said The Times.

Dominic Lawson, president of the English Chess Federation, told the paper that Sivanandan is a “phenomenon”.

“It’s an extraordinary result for an eight-year-old and something we’ve certainly never seen in this country,” said Lawson. “She has a remarkably mature playing style, it’s strategic and patient. She has what you might describe as a long game.”

Writing on X, international master Lawrence Tent called Sivanandan “one of the greatest talents I’ve witnessed in recent memory. The maturity of her play, her sublime touch, it’s truly breathtaking.”

“I have no doubt she will be England’s greatest player and most likely one of the greatest the game has ever seen,” he added.

Sivananda began playing chess during lockdown when she was just five years old after she “rescued an old chess board out of a bin bag”, said the Daily Mail.

“I got fascinated with the pieces and I started taking them. I kept asking questions so my dad then taught me [how to play] using YouTube,” she said.

Sivanandan hopes to become a grandmaster and eventually compete for the women’s world championship, currently dominated by Chinese players. These are “high ambitions” said the FT, “but given what she has achieved so far, you would not bet against her”.