Checkmate: 9-year-old chess prodigy breaks records, barriers in male-dominated game

Bodhana Sivanandan settled into her chair as she prepared for her first match of the Cambridge International Open, a high-level chess tournament put on by the English Chess Federation, where some of the world's highest ranked chess players compete.

Then 8 years old, Bodhana was unlike many of her competitors. To even her eyes with Samuel Gaffney, her 30-year-old opponent, her father Sivanandan Velayutham had to help her into a booster seat, her feet dangling above the ground.

Bodhana, a chess prodigy unlike any chess prodigy England -- or perhaps the world -- has ever seen, would go on to win the match.

By the conclusion of the event, which was held this past February, Bodhana had a FIDE rating (or International Chess Federation rating) of 2088, a number generated by a complicated scoring algorithm that ranks the world's top chess players. That figure was the highest rating for a player under 9 in the world. Bodhana was also the only girl in the top 10, the highest rated 8-year-old girl in the history of chess, and the third highest of any sex all time, according to Chess.com, which tracks historical statistics.

While these statistics change frequently according to rating and age changes-- in the April rankings, Bodhana fell to second in the under 10 category, and another girl, Nourseen Amr Abid, broached the updated March top 10 list-- a stellar performance at another recent tournament is projected to put her within roughly 30 points of becoming the highest rated 9-year-old girl of all time, according to FIDE live statistics and chess.com's historical records.

Bodhana turned 9 just one month ago in March.

"That little girl is 8, and she is the strongest chess player of either sex in the world of her age," then-79-year-old British chess champion Peter Lee told Chess.com after Bodhana delivered him the same losing fate as Gaffney in a separate match last year.

Malcolm Pein, the director of international chess at the English Chess Federation and an international master of chess himself, believes Bodhana has a chance to be the greatest women's chess player of all time.

"We're sure that Bodhana will become a Grandmaster one day -- we're absolutely sure of that, given her current meteoric rise," Pein told ABC News, referencing the top title in the chess world, of which there are only 42 female Grandmasters worldwide.

A prodigious rise

As Bodhana, now 9, tells it, her introduction to chess was a coincidence born from a family friend gifting her a chess board.

"I really liked the pieces, especially the knight and the queen, and I wanted to use them as toys. But, my dad told me that I couldn't because then the next person who got it couldn't play," explained Bodhana. "So instead, I just started playing."

According to Bodhana and her parents, who do not play competitive chess, she learned the game from YouTube videos when she was 5 years old. Over the course of the next year, Bodhana began to dominate tournaments, first locally and then internationally.

Pein remembers the sobering moment he realized Bodhana's brilliance at an event called Chess Fest he organized last year in London's Trafalgar Square. Seeing Bodhana struggle for a moment, he offered her complicated strategic advice.

"I saw information was processed for about a microsecond. And then she just nodded. 'Yep, I get it.' She just gets it," recounted Pein.

Pein said he believes Bodhana is able to process the game in a fashion similar to Beth Harmon, the main character of the Netflix hit "The Queen's Gambit," which is based on the 1983 American novel of the same name by Walter Tevis.

In "The Queen's Gambit", Beth can conjure a vision of a chess board and see the game play out while staring at the ceiling.

"She's reached that level of fluency that you need in order to make giant steps in chess, and she's done it at the age of 8," he said.

Last October, Bodhana clinched the triple crown, a title given to a player concurrently holding age-specific titles in classical, rapid and blitz chess, three distinctly different styles of the game. "She literally swept the board in a completely unprecedented manner," said Pein of her historic performance.

A rising queen among chess kings

Any mention of Bodhana's skill and dominance as a young girl in chess inevitably conjures the mention of Judit Polgár, who received the title of Grandmaster at age 15 and is widely regarded as the greatest women's chess player of all time.

"Her rating trajectory is currently comparable and in some cases superior to that of Judit Polgár, who is the greatest female player who ever lived," said Pein.

Polgár's list of accomplishments are endless and impressive. In addition to attaining grandmaster status, her achievements include being the only woman to ever to crack the world's top 10 and defeating Garry Kasparov, the Russian grandmaster who dominated the chess world for decades before retiring in 2005.

In an interview with ABC News, Polgár said she has "mixed feelings" about her experience as a woman in chess.

"It was always a topic of course," said Polgár, recounting her early days as a rising female chess star. She said after matches, she would hear comments that detracted from her obvious ability.

"I received comments from my opponents and from other participants [like], 'Well, she's not so good.' 'She's lucky.' 'It's by chance.' 'I have a headache.' 'I have a stomach ache.' Whatever excuses."

As for Bodhana's dominance, Polgár said she struggles to understand exactly why we speak about women's and men's chess competition on different planes.

"It bothers my ear that we talk about girls separately," she said. "She's just a very good player of her age. And I think we can say that … if she's taking it seriously, she's going to be very good."

Pein explained the social barrier that he believes plays a partial role in the lower number of women in chess.

"It's difficult for women in chess because sometimes, there's just not a critical class of women. It's very intimidating if you turn up to a chess club with 30 men and you're the only girl," he said.

As of 2022, women make up only about 11% of rated players in the classical style of chess, according to a presentation for the 2022 FIDE Exchange Forum addressing the topic of women in chess.

Because Bodhana's meteoric chess rise primarily began during COVID, she was not forced into the chess clubs packed wall-to-wall with boys. She learned in the comfort of her own home.

Despite the 9-year-old's untraditional introduction to the game, Bodhana appeared unfazed about squaring up against men -- including the current king of the chess world -- while speaking with ABC News.

"I wanted to play the highest rated player, who is Magnus Carlsen now," she said, mentioning the most prominent name in chess today.

She added, "I like to play harder opponents so if I lose, I can learn from them and I can learn from what they are doing."

A 'normal' kid with big dreams

Despite the accolades, Bodhana's mother Lakshmy Sivanandan said the young chess champion is just a normal kid.

"When I read the articles and stuff, they just portray her as someone who's, like, an adult or something. No, she's just a kid," she said. "She's just normal like other kids, apart from chess. She's just a kid."

Lakshmy Priya Sivanandan said her daughter has other skills too, like playing the piano and violin, and she likes to play soccer at lunchtime with her friends. She is also an older sibling to 7-year-old twin sisters.

To her parents, Bodhana's otherworldly talent in chess is a worthwhile passion to pursue, as long as she is happy.

"In year one, she wanted to become the prime minister of the United Kingdom. And along with that, she wants to become a doctor. And before those two, she wants to become a Grandmaster ... and participate in the World Championship," Lakshmy Priya Sivanandan said with a smile.

"So yeah, anything is possible. So we just encourage her to go forward with her dreams."