Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, Breaks Judit Polgar's Chess Record

Bodhana Sivanandan just rewrote the chess record books again. The eleven-year-old from Harrow, north London, became the youngest woman in history to earn the International Master title, breaking a record that Judit Polgar had held for thirty-eight years, according to the English Chess Federation. She sealed it on Friday at the European Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro.

The Game That Sealed It

Going into the seventh and final round, Bodhana Sivanandan had already banked two of the three strong tournament results, known as norms, that the title demands. She needed one more. Playing top board for the English team She Plays To Win Lionesses, she beat Sweden's Woman International Master Viktoria Johansson with the black pieces, according to The Guardian. The game lasted thirty-two moves and her team won the match four to nothing.

Across the whole event she scored five and a half points from seven games, a rating performance of twenty-four sixty-five, comfortably above the line a norm requires. At the moment of the title she was eleven years, seven months and sixteen days old. Polgar was twelve when she earned the same title in 1988.

Beating Grandmasters Between Classes

The week was not a cakewalk. Early on she came close to drawing former world title challenger Aleksandra Goryachkina, then outplayed International Master Olga Badelka, a player rated above twenty-four hundred. Those results lifted her rating to just under the twenty-four hundred mark before the final round. She also drew with Georgian Grandmaster Nino Batsiashvili in a long eighty-five-move battle, according to ChessBase.

Bodhana Sivanandan is now the seventh-youngest player of either gender to become an International Master. ChessBase lists the fastest as Roman Shogdzhiev of Russia, who earned the title at ten years and three months in 2025. She sits just ahead of world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, who was eleven years and nine months old when he got there.

A Pattern of Record-Breaking

This is the latest in a streak that sounds almost made up. Last month she became the youngest player ever to earn the Woman Grandmaster title after a strong showing for England at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Last year she became the youngest girl to beat a grandmaster in a classical game when she defeated England's Peter Wells at ten years and five months old.

This July she beat French Grandmaster Marc'Andria Maurizzi, rated twenty-six twenty-eight, making her the youngest girl to win against a player rated above twenty-six hundred. In August she won her first British Women's Chess Championship after a playoff in Coventry. At age nine, she debuted at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest and became the youngest person ever selected to represent England internationally in any sport.

How a Lockdown Discovery Became a Career

Her origin story starts during the Covid lockdowns. At age five, she found a chess set among belongings her father was about to throw away, according to the English Chess Federation. A few years later she was representing her country. Her family has roots in Trichy, in Tamil Nadu, India, as reported by ChessBase India, and she is already the highest-rated female chess player in Britain.

The International Master title matters because, unlike the women-only titles, it is open to players of both sexes. It is the second-highest title in the sport, below Grandmaster. Earning it normally takes three norms plus a rating of twenty-four hundred, which is why a sixth grader hitting it stands out. Malcolm Pein, the federation's director of international chess, called her a "generational talent" and said she is more than matching what Polgar achieved at the same age.

The timing adds to the buzz. Chess has surged with younger audiences through streaming, online platforms and viral matches, and young stars from India, Uzbekistan and Argentina keep pushing the age floor lower. Bodhana Sivanandan joins that wave as a face of the sport in Britain, and her rise connects to bigger world news stories about how young talent breaks through. Her path also shows how national federation support, with government funding through the culture department, can help a prodigy compete abroad.

What Comes Next for Bodhana Sivanandan

The next target is obvious: the full Grandmaster title, the highest honour in chess. That race has a rival. The Guardian notes that Shogdzhiev, also born in 2015, needs just one more norm and a rating of twenty-five hundred to take Abhimanyu Mishra's record as the youngest grandmaster ever, and he could manage it before turning twelve in February 2027.

Her next tournament will be the FIDE Swiss section at the London Chess Classic, which runs from November twenty-fifth to December fourth. For a generation raised on streamed games and online blitz, the story is a reminder that the old board game still produces new prodigies. Fans of sports that reward brains over brawn should keep Bodhana Sivanandan on the radar, because the Grandmaster chase starts now.