Wednesday, October 25, 2023

8-Year-Old Makes Chess History: England's First World Youth Champion in 25 Years

Tarjei J. Svensen reports an extraordinary achievement for British chess:

British chess sensation WCM Bodhana Sivanandan made history today, scoring 10/10 to become England's first world youth champion in 25 years and complete a historic triple crown.

The eight-year-old prodigy is dominating the Girls Under 8 category of the World Cadet Championship in Egypt and clinched the title today with a round to spare.

And the story just gets more extraordinary. Bodhana already holds the rapid and blitz titles (for games played at faster speeds than in the tournament she has just won) in her age group, and in gaining these three titles she has won every single one of the 32 games she's played.

Even more remarkably than that, she won the British women's blitz title as the age of seven.

If you worry about there being separate titles for boys and girls, I think this is a genuine attempt to encourage female players when they are vastly outnumbered, whether for reasons of nature or nurture, by males in any tournament by males.

I don't know about junior chess, but at the British championship in Leicester this summer there was an open title and a women's title, with the best British women players opting to play in the open against the men.

But it may be significant that the strongest woman player ever is Judit Polgár, and her father never entered her in a girls-only tournament when she was young.

Anyway, you can see Bodhana in the video above. She is playing against Peter Lee, who was British champion in 1965.

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