While most children are still learning the rules, Bodhana Sivanandan is already thinking several moves ahead, outsmarting players far older and more experienced than her.
Indian-origin chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan has become England’s highest-rated female player, according to the latest FIDE rankings. The 11-year-old, whose family moved from Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, to England in 2007, holds a rating of 2366 points.
The North London primary school student has surpassed four-time British women’s champion Lan Yao, 25, and entered the world’s top 100 women for the first time, currently ranked 72, the English Chess Federation said.
Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, also of Indian origin, congratulated her, recalling a game they played together at Downing Street. “Her success is no surprise,” he wrote on X.
Bodhana Sivanandan’s FIDE rating has surged to 2,366, overtaking 25-year-old Lan Yao, England’s previous top female player. “It’s great, but I want to keep improving,” she said. Bodhana discovered chess at age five during the pandemic when she found a board her father, Siva, an IT professional, had intended to donate. “I had to show her a YouTube video to explain the rules, and she quickly became curious. Her interest and skills grew with every game we played,” he recalled, according to The Times.
She began competing at Harrow Chess Club and online, and at just seven, she won all 24 matches at the 2022 European Schools Championship, claiming three gold medals. In 2023, Bodhana earned the FIDE title of Women’s Candidate Master after surpassing a 2,000 rating. International Master Lawrence Trent predicted she could become England’s greatest player and one of the sport’s all-time best.
In 2024, she became the youngest athlete to represent England in any sport when selected for the Chess Olympiad in Hungary, sometimes sitting on a booster seat during matches. Last August, she became the youngest female to defeat a grandmaster by beating 60-year-old Peter Wells at the British Chess Championships in Liverpool. She has also defeated Mariya Muzychuk, a former Women’s World Champion from Ukraine.
Bodhana’s school grants her special permission to travel for tournaments, allowing her to compete across Europe, including trips from Iceland to Spain this week. Her ultimate goal is to become the youngest grandmaster in history, a record currently held by American Abhimanyu Mishra, who achieved it at age 12.
