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‘I do it because I like it’: Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, on being youngest ever ‘woman grandmaster’

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London schoolgirl’s father taught her to play when she was five, and three years later she beat former British champion Over the weekend, 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan became the youngest ever holder of the title of woman grandmaster at the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan – while playing on a car booster seat so she could reach the board. By Tuesday morning she was back at school in north London for a design and technology lesson.

Bodhana has to juggle the competing pressures of being an international chess sensation with the more ordinary challenges of childhood and her first term at secondary school.

Read the original report at The Guardian.

Sources and context

The Guardian

Source headline and summary supplied via NewsData.io. First collected by NewsJaws on 2026-10-02. This is an automated news brief, not original NewsJaws reporting. Dates reflect the source publication. Feed delays may apply.