Bodhana Sivanandan, a 10-year-old British Tamil from Harrow, north-west London, has made chess history by becoming both the youngest woman international master in the world and the youngest female player ever to defeat a grandmaster.
At just 10 years, five months and three days old, Bodhana claimed victory over 60-year-old Grandmaster Peter Wells in the final round of the 2025 British Chess Championships in Liverpool earlier this month. The International Chess Federation confirmed her record-breaking feat, surpassing the previous mark set in 2019 by American Carissa Yip, who achieved the milestone at 10 years, 11 months and 20 days.
Grandmaster is the highest title in chess, held for life, while Bodhana’s new rank of woman international master is the second-highest title awarded exclusively to women, below only woman grandmaster.
Bodhana’s rise has been rapid. She was thought to have become the youngest person ever to represent England internationally in any sport when she joined the England Women’s Team for the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Hungary.
Her father Siva previously told the BBC that neither he nor his wife, both engineering graduates, play chess, describing her talent as a mystery. "I try to trace down whether any of my cousins or anyone plays - nobody has any chess energy or chess-playing skills, no one played for any chess events," he said.
Bodhana first picked up a chessboard during the Covid-19 lockdown, aged five, after a family friend gifted her one while moving back to India. Initially interested in using the pieces as toys, she soon became captivated by the game itself. “I wanted to use the pieces as toys. Instead, my dad said that I could play the game, and then I started from there,” she recalled.
Speaking to the BBC, Bodhana said chess makes her “feel good” and helps with “lots of other things like maths, how to calculate.” Her ultimate goal is to become a grandmaster.
Malcolm Pein, an international chess master and head of a charity promoting chess in schools, praised her composure and talent: “She could easily become the women’s world champion, or maybe the overall world champion. And certainly I believe that she’s on course to become a grandmaster.”
