Bodhana breaks the record

Let me quote Leonard Barden in his Guardian column:

England’s 11-year-old talent Bodhana Sivanandan scored her best individual result last Saturday, when the Harrow schoolgirl defeated France’s 2628-rated grandmaster Marc’Andria Maurizzi, 19, in the opening round of the Dole Trophy in Aix-en-Provence. Maurizzi was world under-20 junior champion in 2023 and is the current French champion.

Sivanandan had beaten two GMs previously but neither was as eminent as Maurizzi, and her result is a new world age record for a girl to defeat a grandmaster rated over 2600. The Frenchman held the advantage for the first 27 moves but then blundered into a tactic which won his queen for inadequate compensation.

The previous record holder was the all-time women’s No 1, Judit Polgar, who defeated GM Lajos Portisch, a former world title candidate but then on the wrong side of 50, in the 1988 Hungarian Championship when she was aged 12 years and two months.

At 11 years four months, Sivanandan also became the fifth youngest pre-teen to defeat a 2600+ rated GM, following in the footsteps of Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who did it at nine, Faustino Oro at 10, and Roman Shogdzhiev and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu at 11 years one month.

I would like to mention that Leonard Barden has been writing his weekly chess column in The Guardian uninterrupted for, believe us, 71 years – breaking all records for this area of publication. His observations on the contemporary chess scene are well written and meticulously researched. Leonard was born in August 1929, and is 85 years older than Bodhana.

Other news outlets have similarly registered Bodhana's record. If you go to Google News you will get page after page of stories about her feat. 

We have a very special relationship with Bodhana and her family. After getting to know the 10-year-old and her family on Zoom, I invited her to visit ChessBase in Hamburg for special training. In April she and her father came over for a week, and the girl got sessions with our experts.

One important central session was with our software experts – above Thomas Stark – in order to learn the advance functions of ChessBase 26. That can reduce the search for material on an opponent or an opening from two hours to a few seconds. The time saved can be more meaningfully spent studying the material, instead of searching for it.

Bodhana was also given a number of sessions of endgame training with our in-house expert Dr. Karsten Müller. Afterwards Karsten did an Endgame Magic session with the girl.

Bodhana also did multiple sessions with our in-house trainer Dorian Rogozenco, which the grandmaster enjoyed as much as the 11-year-old. There were additional sessions with our tactics expert Oliver Reeh, who in the end gave her a large number of positions to take home for practice.

Of course Bodhana also visited the Friedel household, where she surprisingly lost 0:2 against my wife Ingrid – in Snakes and Ladders! She is such a fun person to have around.

Our media channel expert Arne Kaehler did the above interwiew with Bodhana – one you should definitely watch, if only to listen to her enchanting British accent.

Finally I took Bodhana and her father, Sivanandan Velayutham, to meet the Bundesliga team of Hamburg. I wanted her to play in the German league, and the management committee offered her a place in the Women's Bundesliga team. I insisted: she must play in the men's section. "But there she would have to face strong grandmasters," they said. Not a problem, I told them. Discussions are still ongoing, but we can expect to see Bodhana playing for Hamburg in the near future.

Flash: WGM and IM norms

I had finshed writing this piece when Sivanandan called. He was at the Dole Open 2026, where Bodhana had just completed her second WGM and her first IM norms. To do this she had had to survive a harrowing six-hour final game against a strong opponent. "The road of our chess journey is long, we need to keep calm and carry on," Siva said.