England’s talent from Harrow can become the youngest female international master in chess history

Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, who needed just a few rating points to qualify for an open international master title and to break Judit Polgar’s world age record, went very close to a draw against the former world title challenger GM Aleksandra Goryachkina in round one of this week’s European Club Cup, then outplayed her IM opponent in round three to take her rating to 2399.4 against the 2400 needed. In her next game, she drew from a winning position against GM Nino Batsiashvili, rated 2426.

Sivanandan has thus already joined the 10 youngest 2400-rated players of all time, who include the new Russian star Roman Shogdzhiev, the world No 5, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Argentina’s Faustino Oro, and Turkey’s Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus.

Newly promoted SPTW were expected to be outclassed in the top division of the 4NCL British League, but proved a revelation

She Plays to Win Lionesses, the all-female team which won successive promotions to the first division of Britain’s Four Nations Chess League (4NCL), were expected to be outclassed in the top flight, but instead proved the revelation of the opening weekend of the new season.

SPTW wanted to continue without male players in the season’s 2026-27 renewal, but the league stood by its rule, introduced to promote women’s chess, that top division teams must include at least one player of each sex.

The Chess England event was a rare test of UK skills against strong foreign opposition

Master chess in central London is rare, although the annual ChessFest in Trafalgar Square attracts more than 20,000 visitors.

In London’s clubland in Pall Mall, the RAC clubhouse has hosted the Oxford v Cambridge Varsity match for almost half a century, while the Athenaeum was the venue for a dramatic match in 2023 where the record-breaking prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan defeated the former British champion Peter Lee.

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Host nation won having led almost from start to finish, while young English player reached a stunning landmark

Uzbekistan, the host nation, won the open gold medals at the 2026 Olympiad, the biennial chess international team tournament, at Samarkand last week in the style of the legendary Soviet grandmasters of long ago. India, the defending champions, were second, Germany a surprise third, and the top-seeded United States fourth.

The hosts led almost from start to finish, with world No 5 Nodirbek Abdusattorov and the world title challenger Javokhir Sindarov their top-board powerhouses. The team recovered swiftly from a single defeat by Germany, and were particularly impressive in crushing Armenia by 3.5-0.5 in the penultimate round. The Uzbekistan government rewarded each of the five players with $200,000 (£178,000), a house and a Volkswagen, plus $50,000 for the coach Rustam Kasimdzhanov.

Bodhana Sivanandan’s father taught her to play age five and soon she was beating ex-champions. Now she is lighting up the Chess Olympiad

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.

The Uzbeks, including world championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov, won their first seven matches before a surprise loss to Germany

After eight of the 11 rounds in the 400-team Olympiad in Samarkand, the host team Uzbekistan share the lead in the race for the gold medals, despite a round eight loss to co-leaders Germany and scope for more upsets in the remaining three rounds.

England have lost twice, first to the No 2 seeds India, then in a shock against Uzbekistan’s second team, while England women have performed well, with 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan beaten only once on top board.

The former world title challenger, 61, will take on representatives from five other continents in a tournament rated by the global chess body Fide

Nigel Short, the 1993 world title challenger, will head to the Antarctic for his next tournament as the 61-year-old, formerly of Bolton but resident for many decades in Greece, attempts to become the first chess player to win tournaments on seven continents.

There is history for the very strongest grandmasters successfully defying the ravages of time: Emanuel Lasker in his mid-60s at Moscow 1935 and 1936, Viktor Korchnoi in his 70s, and, most impressive of all, Vasily Smyslov reaching the 1984 Candidates final against Garry Kasparov at 63.

England Open squad have internal tensions but the women’s team blend rising talent with experience

Uzbekistan, the host nation, are the favourites to win the 208-team biennial chess Olympiad in Samarkand, which has its opening ceremony on Tuesday, and its first round (of 11) on Wednesday.

The defending champions, India, China and the US are Uzbekistan’s most dangerous rivals. India would have been the open Olympiad favourites but for the shaky form of the world champion, the 20-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju, who was the top board gold medallist in Budapest two years ago but is likely to play lower down the order in Samarkand. USA are led by the world No 3, Fabiano Caruana, and the world No 5, Wesley So, but their lower boards, including the variable Hans Niemann, look more vulnerable.

Fans would have preferred contest for world crown, but 20-minute Rapid games are still competitive substitute

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, will be paired at least twice in the next few days with the world championship challenger, Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov, in the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League, the six-team franchise competition based on cricket’s Indian Premier League.

In 2024 the Global League was staged in London, but this year it is back in India at Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), India’s technology capital, from 5-13 September, finishing two days before the 400-team chess Olympiad opens in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

The Indian, just 21, scored his second major success of the summer following Norway Chess at Oslo while Wesley So halved to Sinquefield Cup victory with nine straight draws

India’s world No 12, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, won the Grand Chess Tour finals in St Louis on Thursday night when he defeated the US’s world No 2, Fabiano Caruana, in a mix of classical, rapid and blitz games by 15-13. It was the 21-year-old’s second major success of the summer following Norway Chess at Oslo and it earned him a record $200,000 first prize, up from $150,000 in 2025.

Earlier, Wesley So, the US world No 6, won the prestigious Sinquefield Cup and more than $100,000 for the second year in succession, despite a run of nine mostly colourless draws.

Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, is youngest ever British women’s champion while Supratit Banerjee, 12, becomes England’s youngest ever international master

A new generation took over at the top of British chess on Sunday, when a trio of youthful talents demonstrated their skills on a national stage. Shreyas Royal, 17, of Dartford, Kent, became the youngest ever British champion, breaking Michael Adams’s 1989 record by two months and underlining his status as an emerging world-class talent. Bodhana Sivanandan, aged 11, and Supratit Banerjee, 12, also delivered memorable performances.

First prize at the University of Warwick, Coventry, was £10,000.

Harrow schoolgirl eclipses legend Judit Polgar as youngest girl ever to score international master result

England’s 11-year-old talent Bodhana Sivanandan fought her way to another world age record last Saturday. Sivanandan ended the Dole Trophy in Aix-en-Provence, France, with a historic first international master result.

Judit Polgar, the all-time No 1 woman, achieved her first IM norm in April 1988 in the International B section of the New York Open at 11 years and nine months. Sivanandan had a harder route to beating Polgar’s age record by almost five months.

Harrow schoolgirl eclipses legend Judit Polgar’s mark as youngest girl ever to defeat a grandmaster rated above 2600, then draws with a former 2700

England’s 11-year-old talent Bodhana Sivanandan scored her best individual result last Saturday, when the Harrow schoolgirl defeated France’s 2628-rated grandmaster Marc’Andria Maurizzi, 19, in the opening round of the Dole Trophy in Aix-en-Provence. Maurizzi was world under-20 junior champion in 2023 and is the current French champion.

Sivanandan had beaten two GMs previously but neither was as eminent as Maurizzi, and her result is a new world age record for a girl to defeat a grandmaster rated over 2600. The Frenchman held the advantage for the first 27 moves but then blundered into a tactic which won his queen for inadequate compensation.

EU unveils largest package in four years of measures against Russian individuals and interests; Laura Loomer shows up in Kyiv. What we know on day 1,612

Judit Polgár says she does not ‘feel enough strength within me’ to take on the responsibility of uniting a divided nation

The Hungarian chess ⁠legend Judit Polgár has said she will not accept the nomination for president, only a day after the ⁠prime minister, Péter Magyar, ⁠said he ​would ask her to take up the largely ceremonial role.

Magyar had said he would meet Polgár on Monday to discuss the matter. “Our country needs unity, peace and a president that all Hungarians can be proud of,” he wrote on social media. “Judit Polgár’s name has been synonymous with talent and perseverance for decades.”

Two of the top four chess nations will go head to head in Miami on 27-28 July

The USA and Uzbekistan are among the world’s current four best chess teams, along with India and China, so the announcement that the pair will meet at Miami on 27-28 July in an all-play-all rapid and blitz Scheveningen format is sure to create interest as a guide to what may happen when the 200-nation classical Olympiad takes place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from 15-27 September. Full details of the forthcoming match are here.

The two teams in Miami will both be at virtually full strength. The USA will field the world Nos 2 and 3, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, plus the world No 7, Wesley So, and the world Nos 17 and 22, Leinier Domínguez and Levon Aronian. Only the world No 19, Hans Niemann, might have made it stronger.

The Frenchman is ranked world No 12, but that is a disappointment after he became the youngest ever 2800-rated player at 18 years and five months

Alireza Firouzja is shaping up to be one of the nearly men of grandmaster chess. The Iran-born Frenchman, 23, has just won the St Louis-organised Croatia Super Rapid and Blitz in Zagreb. He was far ahead at the start of the last day, but had a poor run of 2/7 during the final rounds before a successful Armageddon tie-break.

Firouzja’s career has been limited by his below-par performances in the Candidates. In 2022, he spoiled his chances by playing blitz into the small hours; in 2024, he did worse still, finishing seventh out of eight. He made a major effort to qualify again in 2025, hiring the late Daniel Naroditsky as his coach for the Grand Swiss in Samarkand, but finished third when only two qualified. At the victory ceremony, the bronze medal podium was conspicuously uninhabited.

Annual celebration on 12 July enables social players and children to challenge some of England’s best

On Sunday, 12 July, ChessFest, the game’s annual celebration, returns to Trafalgar Square in central London and offers a unique opportunity for ordinary players and their children to experience top chess free of charge. Complete beginners are welcome and will receive helpful instruction from Chess in Schools and Communities tutors.

The action starts at noon and continues until 7pm. Throughout the day, experts including nine-time British champion Michael Adams, three-time champion Gawain Maroroa Jones, and many other international players will give simultaneous displays or be available for one-to-one speed games in the Challenge the Chess Master tent.