- An eight-year-old girl has set new chess records at a European tournament.
- Bodhana Sivanandan won the women's prize at the European blitz championship in Croatia.
An eight-year-old girl from London has set new chess records at a European tournament.
Bodhana Sivanandan won the women's prize at the European blitz championship in Zagreb, Croatia, finishing 73rd out of 555 players.
Sivanandan arrived late to the event in the Croatian capital after going to the wrong entrance and had to forfeit her first game, losing by default, The Guardian reported.
Nevertheless, the young prodigy won 8.5/13 points against a field that contained some of the best players in the world, including 48 grandmasters — the highest title a chess player can hold.
In one game, the eight-year-old defeated the international master and England women's coach Lorin D'Costa.
In the final round, she drew with Romanian grandmaster Vladislav Nevednichy, 54, the youngest player ever to avoid defeat to a chess champion of the top rank in a competitive game.
Her tournament performance was rated at 2316, the level of a woman grandmaster, per The Guardian.
Dominic Lawson, the president of the English Chess Federation, said her performance was "completely remarkable but not that surprising, because she is a phenomenon," The Times reported.
"It's an extraordinary result for an eight-year-old and something we've certainly never seen in this country," Lawson said. "She has a remarkably mature playing style, it's strategic and patient. She has what you might describe as a long game."
Many seasoned chess players have also weighed in on Sivanandan's fine display, with Irina Bulmaga, a Romanian professional chess player and international master, hailing it as an "unbelievable result."
"What a phenomenon she is," she added in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Lawrence Trent, another international master wrote in another post: "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."
The eight-year-old took up the game during the UK's COVID-19 pandemic and learned quickly, even being invited to play chess with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street, The Times reported.