Bodhana Sivanandan Breaks 38-Year Chess Age Record

What happened:

Watch the highlights:

The Guardian reports that 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan scored the best individual result of her young career by defeating France’s Marc’Andria Maurizzi in the opening round of the Dole Trophy in Aix-en-Provence. Maurizzi is rated 2628, was the 2023 world under-20 junior champion, and is the current French champion. The win makes Sivanandan the youngest girl ever to defeat a grandmaster rated above 2600, breaking a record associated with Judit Polgar that had stood for 38 years.

Result context:

This was not her first grandmaster win, but the Guardian’s account makes clear why this one is different. Sivanandan had beaten two grandmasters before, yet neither carried Maurizzi’s combination of rating and credentials. Beating a 2600-plus grandmaster is a different benchmark from simply scoring an upset against a titled player, because it moves the achievement into elite competitive territory rather than novelty territory.

How the game turned:

The Guardian reports that Maurizzi held the advantage for the first 27 moves before blundering into a tactic that cost him his queen for inadequate compensation. That detail matters because it keeps the result precise. This was not described as a smooth start-to-finish squeeze by the 11-year-old; it was a high-level game in which she had to be alert enough to punish a decisive tactical error when it appeared.

Tournament impact:

In an event like the Dole Trophy, an opening-round result of this scale changes the attention around a player immediately. Sivanandan’s win becomes both a standings result and a marker for future pairings, preparation and scrutiny. The supplied source also says she then drew with a former 2700-rated player, which reinforces that the Maurizzi win was not an isolated headline in an otherwise ordinary event start.

Why it matters:

Age records in chess can be noisy if the opposition level is vague. This one is cleaner because the threshold is specific: a girl defeating a grandmaster rated over 2600. The comparison to Polgar is also significant because Polgar is the reference point for elite female chess achievement. The record does not guarantee Sivanandan’s future path, but it does place this result in a rare historical category.

What to watch:

The next useful signals are how Sivanandan performs through the rest of the Dole Trophy, whether she continues converting strong positions against elite opposition, and how her rating responds after the event. One result can make history; sustained tournament performance determines how quickly expectations change.

Confidence:

Confirmed by The Guardian: Sivanandan defeated 2628-rated Marc’Andria Maurizzi at the Dole Trophy, broke the girls’ age record for beating a 2600-plus grandmaster, and later drew with a former 2700 player. Still requiring follow-up: full tournament standings, final placement and rating changes after the event.