NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT
New York, NY, July 19, 2024: The New York Times today featured 9-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, who has emerged as one of England’s brightest chess stars since learning the game during the pandemic lockdown. Bodhana has clinched a European title, qualified for the prestigious Chess Olympiad, and established herself as a formidable player on the international stage.
Bodhana, who turned 9 in March, is from the London borough of Harrow. She has become the youngest player to represent England at such an elite level in chess and possibly the youngest in any international sporting competition.
“I was happy and I was ready to play,” Bodhana said in a phone interview with The New York Times, reflecting on her selection for this year’s Olympiad, an event often likened to the Olympics of chess.
The young prodigy first encountered chess at age 5 when she stumbled upon a board her father, Sivanandan Velayutham, was planning to discard. Intrigued by the pieces, particularly the knight and the queen, Bodhana quickly became fascinated with the game. Her father introduced her to the basics, and soon she was watching YouTube tutorials and competing in online tournaments.
“I’m trying to become the youngest grandmaster in the world,” she told NYT, “and also one of the greatest players of all time.”
In a 2022 interview, she had explained her love of chess thus: “I love to play chess because it helps me to recognize patterns, focus my attention, and is helping me to learn how to strategize and calculate moves in advance. Also, I like the way the chess pieces move on the board, especially the knight.
Bodhana’s journey has been nothing short of phenomenal. She made headlines by winning the first women’s prize in the European Blitz Chess Championship last December and currently holds the title of Woman FIDE Master, as bestowed by the International Chess Federation. Her achievements secured her a spot on the English Olympiad team purely on merit, according to Malcolm Pein, the director of international chess at the English Chess Federation.
Her inclusion in the team is historic, with the second youngest player being 23-year-old Lan Yao.
These days, Bodhana trains for about an hour each day after school, guided by mentors and coaches from the England Chess Federation, according to the NYT feature. She particularly enjoys studying the endgames of the late Cuban chess player José Raúl Capablanca, whom she admires for his strategic prowess.
Abhimanyu Mishra, from the US, holds the record for the youngest person to reach grandmaster in 2021, when he was just 12, according to a BBC feature on her. But Bodhana says she intends to clinch the title at the age of 10.