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Who Is Bodhana Sivanandan, 10-Year-Old Record-Breaking Chess Star?
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10-year-old chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan from Harrow has beaten GM Peter Wells at the 2025 British Chess Championships.
Young chess star Bodhana Sivanandan recently created history to become the youngest girl to defeat a Grand Master at only 10 years old in the final round of the 2025 British Chess Championships, going on to break a record held by American Carissa Shiwen Yip in 2019.
Bodhana beat the 60-year-old English chess GM Peter Wells.
Sivanandan is from Harrow, a town in Greater London and the daughter of Indian Tamil parents from Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. She attends the St John Fisher Primary School in Harrow.
'I love to play chess because it helps me to recognise patterns, focus my attention and helps me to learn how to strategise and calculate moves in advance. Also, I like the way the chess pieces move on the board, especially the knight," Bodhana told The Guardian three years back, having started to play the game as a five-year-old during lockdown.
English chess master Leonard Barden wrote three years ago, 'Bodhana Sivanandan, who won silver medals in both the rapid and blitz European under-8 girls, is world No 1 girl in blitz in her age group by a whopping margin of 322 Fide points" and 'Sivanandan's medals in Serbia match Houska's fifth place on her debut in the 1988 world girls U10".
In the European Schools age group championships held in Rhodes three years ago, Bodhana won all 24 matches she played and gained three gold medals.
Bodhana Sivanandan is 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 #Chess — Lawrence Trent (@LawrenceTrentIM) December 13, 2023
Two years ago, Bodhana beat veteran British chess player Peter Lee in an exhibition game. Last month, at the age of 10, she became the youngest chess player to earn a Woman GM norm, breaking Chinese GM Hou Yifan's 20-year-old record.
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