Bodhana Sivanandan won the gold medal in the World Girls U8 Championship in Sharm El Sheikh earlier this month, making her the first English world youth champion since 1998, when Nicholas Pert won the U18 event and Ruth Sheldon won the Girls U18.
I witnessed Sivanandan’s enormous talent when we played a casual game of speed chess at ChessFest in Trafalgar Square in July. I knew of her accomplishments, which included tying for second place in the UK women’s blitz championship at the age of seven last year. But naively, I chose an offbeat, slightly risky opening. It soon transpired that she knew it at least as well as I did. A few moves later I was, for a brief moment, utterly lost. I won the game in the end, but was left in no doubt about her prospects.
Sivanandan scored an emphatic 11/11, two points clear of her nearest rival. In June this year, she also won both the Girls U8 rapid and blitz tournaments in Batumi Georgia, also with 11 wins in each event.
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