Bengaluru: Bodhana Sivanandan is eleven and strikingly unflappable. the chess phenom from north-west London has a curious fondness for the quieter, more exacting demands of the endgame While brave attacks and flashy sacrifices are often the currency of players her age.
Result
Bodhana won her British title after a playoff against Ireland’s first WGM, Trisha Kanyamarala. “But I don’t want to stop at just winning the women’s championship. She has a stack of them already – youngest-ever player to earn a Woman Grandmaster (WGM) norm and youngest-ever female player to earn the Woman International Master (WIM) title. She had only one loss in the tournament, against fellow Indian-origin player and eventual open champion Shreyas Royal.
The Indian-origin tween broke the record held by Elaine Pritchard, who won the British Women’s Championship outright at the age of 13 in 1939. In 2025, she also became the youngest girl ever to defeat a grandmaster. More recently, at 11 years and four months, she became the youngest girl ever to score an International Master (IM) norm.
“I was happy that I won,” she told HT in an interview.
Key Moments
She stumbled upon the game during the pandemic after finding a chess set among belongings a family friend, who was returning to India, had given her father. She was five then.
Individual and team impact
Bodhana is part of the England team for the Chess Olympiad in September. Two years ago, she made her Olympiad debut at just nine. Asked to pick a player whose style she resonates with, Bodhana names José Raúl Capablanca, the gifted and technically elegant Cuban world champion of the early 20th century. No flashy attacks, just unrelenting pressure until her opponent cracked.
One of the finest wins of her career came against former women’s world champion Mariya Muzychuk who she outplayed with the white pieces to pull off a major upset at last year’s European Club Cup.
