11-Year-Old Bodhana Sivanandan Breaks a 38-Year-Old Chess Record

England’s Bodhana Sivanandan is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about names in world chess, and her performance at the Dole Trophy in Aix-en-Provence this past week gave the chess world plenty of reasons to keep watching. The 11-year-old from Harrow opened the tournament with a result few thought possible at her age, then closed it out with another career milestone: her first International Master norm.

A Historic Win in Round One

Sivanandan’s tournament couldn’t have started more dramatically. In the opening round, she faced France’s Marc’Andria Maurizzi, the reigning French champion and 2023 World Under-20 Champion, rated 2628. For much of the game, Maurizzi held the advantage, but on move 27 he blundered into a tactic that cost him his queen for inadequate compensation, handing Sivanandan the win.

The victory made her, at 11 years and four months old, the youngest girl in history to defeat a grandmaster rated above 2600 — breaking a record that had stood since 1988, when Judit Polgar defeated GM Lajos Portisch at the Hungarian Championship at age 12 years and two months. It’s worth noting the record for youngest player overall (regardless of gender) to beat a 2600+ GM still belongs to a small handful of prodigies, including Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who achieved it at just nine years old — but among girls, Sivanandan’s win now stands alone at the top.

Building on an Already Remarkable Run

The Maurizzi win didn’t come out of nowhere. Sivanandan has been steadily collecting notable scalps over the past year, including a win over former Women’s World Champion Mariya Muzychuk at the European Club Cup in October 2025. She also became England’s top-rated female player of any age earlier in 2026, shortly after being awarded the FIDE Master title.

At the Dole Trophy itself, she followed her round-one upset with a string of solid results against a field stacked with grandmasters and international masters, including draws against GM Maxim Rodshtein (peak rating 2710) and GM Paul Velten. By the end of the nine-round event, she had scored 5/9 with a tournament performance rating of 2463 — comfortably above her own rating of 2303, and enough to secure her first International Master norm.

Following in Her Own Footsteps

This isn’t Sivanandan’s first record-breaking moment at the Dole Open. She earned her first Woman Grandmaster norm at the same tournament in 2025, at age 10 — itself a world age record at the time, surpassing a mark previously held by Chinese great Hou Yifan. Coming back to the same event a year later and adding an IM norm to her growing collection of titles reinforces just how quickly her progress is compounding.

A Bright Spot Amid a Mixed Year for Chess

Sivanandan’s breakthrough arrives at an interesting moment for the sport more broadly. The same week brought a difficult result for reigning World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, who finished last without a win at the Quantbox Chennai Grandmasters, extending a rough 2026 that has also included disappointing showings in Wijk aan Zee, Prague, and Oslo. Meanwhile, Alireza Firouzja continued a strong run of his own, climbing back into the world’s live classical top 10 after winning the Chennai event.

Against that backdrop, Sivanandan’s performance stands out as one of the clearer good-news stories in chess this year — a reminder that, even as established stars go through rough patches, the sport’s next generation keeps arriving faster than anyone expected.

What’s Next for Sivanandan?

With one IM norm and a second Woman Grandmaster norm now potentially within reach, Sivanandan remains on a trajectory that puts her among the fastest-rising talents the sport has seen in years. She still needs additional norms and a qualifying rating to complete either title, but given how consistently she has been clearing milestones months or years ahead of schedule, it may not be long before she’s back in the headlines again.