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‘I do it because I like it’: Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, on being youngest ever ‘woman grandmaster’

Global Published 1 October 2026, 19:00 · archived 1 Oct 2026

London schoolgirl’s father taught her to play when she was five, and three years later she beat former British championOver the weekend, 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan became the youngest ever holder of the title of woman grandmaster at the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan – while playing on a car booster seat so she could reach the board. By Tuesday morning she was back at school in north London for a design and technology lesson.Bodhana has to juggle the competing pressures of being an international chess sensation with the more ordinary challenges of childhood and her first term at secondary sc...

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