Bodhana Sivanandan earned a place in the record books last Saturday when the Harrow schoolgirl, just seven years old, tied for second prize in the UK women’s blitz championship at Leamington Spa. As joint winner of the English title she broke the existing age record for a national women’s champion by more than four years in a remarkable performance against opposition led by internationally seasoned rivals.
The open winner was Elmira Mirzoeva, 41, a former Moscow women’s champion now resident in London and playing under a neutral Fide flag. Sivanandan, a point behind, shared the English title with Sussex-based Kamila Hryshchenko, 20, who as a Ukrainian was the 2019 world girls under-18 blitz champion. “Blitz” was defined as three minutes per player for the entire game, plus an increment of two seconds per move.
Sivanandan, already the 2022 world under-eight girl champion at both rapid and blitz, added to her growing reputation by her impressive result, finishing well ahead of several England female internationals. She led for most of the final, winning on time in a drawn position against Hryshchenko after a fluctuating 74-move marathon, and reaching 8.5/9 before a blunder when well placed against the chess broadcaster and writer Natasha Regan set her back. Her only other loss in an 11/14 total was to Mirzoeva. All 15 finalists had previously been first or second in regional qualifiers.
The youngster’s overall performance was rated at 2076 Fide blitz points, master standard, and her Fide rating jumped from 1556 to 1884. Her 328-point gain may be a record for Fide rating improvement in a single day.
Nigel Short, the 1993 world title challenger and England’s most famous player, tweeted: “I don’t like to jinx young players by over-praising them but she looks like a really big talent.” Short was himself a prodigy at nine and later coached several young stars including the three-times British champion, David Howell.
The previous youngest national women’s champions were Akshaya Kalaiyalahan, who shared the 2013 British women’s title at 11, and Salma Ahmed, who in September won the Egyptian title at 12. Henrique Mecking was Brazilian champion at 13, Bobby Fischer US champion at 14 and Judit Polgar Hungarian champion at 15, ahead of all the men.
Polgar was strong enough to win the Hungarian women’s title well before her teens, but had higher ambitions. At age seven, the all-time No 1 woman defeated a master opponent while playing blindfolded.
Sivanandan is a chess maximalist in the tradition of Fischer, who won the 1963-64 US championship with 11/11 before wiping out Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen in the 1971 candidates matches, both by 6-0. She won 24 straight games in April and May at the Euroschools and World Under-8 rapid/blitz in Rhodes, while her score against far stronger opposition last Saturday included eight wins in a row.
She has a pragmatic, no-nonsense approach to blitz chess, where her preferred approach is to play the first 20 or so moves fast, establish a lead on the clock and a slight edge on the board, swap queens to favour her endgame skills, and then win on position or time.
Harder tests await. In particular, she is competing this season in the top division of Britain’s national league, the 4NCL. Teams of eight include a mandatory women’s board, where she plays for Cambridge University. Her first weekend in October proved a baptism of fire, as she was outclassed by WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni, Luxembourg’s No 2 and a popular online commentator and interviewer. There are still nine 4NCL games to go, with the next weekend on 14-15 January.
Sivanandan told the Guardian that her target for 2023 is to become a Women’s Fide Master (2100 level) and to win the world under-eight girls championship at classical chess, which eluded her this year by the slimmest of tie-break margins. She had hoped to finish first and then take on the boys in 2023. Beyond that, her ambition is to become a grandmaster and England’s youngest Olympiad gold medallist, and eventually to win a world title.
Her favourite players are José Raúl Capablanca “for his beautiful endgames” and Magnus Carlsen “for his memory and pattern recognition”. At the London Chessfest in July she met Rachel Reeves, herself a former national girls champion, and reported that the shadow chancellor “is a good chess player, who played a solid and equal game against me until she blundered a knight and resigned after 33 moves”.
Sivanandan currently has no professional coach. She hopes to be included in the English Chess Federation’s accelerator programme for elite talents in 2023 and is mentored by IM Ali Mortazavi and from Steven Coles of Harrow CC. The ECF provided grandmaster support by the two-time British champion Jonathan Hawkins for her world under-eight events, but this ceased at the end of the tournaments.
Regular GM or IM coaching would greatly help Sivanandan, but the ECF lacks government support so it may only come to fruition in the unlikely event of a private or business sponsor deciding to back her exceptional promise.
Jonathan Speelman, the former world semi-finalist, won the open blitz title on tie-break from Eldar Gasanov of Ukraine. GM Mark Hebden was third, while Scotland’s top junior Freddy Gordon, 12, performed strongly in fourth place, including a win against Speelman.
Since the ECF launched its annual UK Blitz Championship in 2018, with qualifiers staged in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast as well as in major English cities, interest has steadily grown, and this week’s extra publicity for Sivanandan will provide a further boost. Speed events are increasingly popular in present-day chess, not least because of the rising costs to participants of traditional tournaments spread over a week or a fortnight.
Away from the UK blitz, Ian Nepomniachtchi (of Russia, playing under a Fide flag) is likely to meet China’s Ding Liren for the world title, recently vacated by Magnus Carlsen, in Mexico City in April 2023.
The women’s candidates matches at Khiva, Uzbekistan, are in their late stages. Aleksandra Goryachkina of Fide/Russia has to overcome three Chinese opponents to become women’s world champion. Her four-game semi-final against Tan Zhongyi is currently tied at 1.5-1.5, with the fourth classical game on Saturday before Sunday tie-breaks if needed.
. If the Muscovite succeeds, she will play a six-game candidates final against Lei Tingjie to decide who challenges Ju Wenjun for the world crown.
3845 1 Qa3! Resigns. The winning double threat is 2 Qd6+ Kc8 3 Ba6 mate and 2 Nxd7+ Rxd7 3 Qxf8+ with 4 Qxg7.
