In 1988, a 12-year-old named Judit Polgar became the youngest female player ever to qualify for chess's International Master title, a record that stood for 38 years. An 11-year-old schoolgirl from Harrow just broke it.

  • 11 years and 7 months old when she qualified
  • 38 years — the age of the record she broke, set by Judit Polgar in 1988
  • 7th youngest player in history, male or female, to become an International Master
  • 2 world records broken in two months, after also becoming the youngest-ever Woman Grandmaster in September

The final norm, won on the road

Bodhana Sivanandan secured her third and decisive IM norm at the European Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro, playing for England's "She Plays To Win Lionesses" team, according to the English Chess Federation. The clinching win came against WIM Viktoria Johansson of Sweden.

It capped a brutal lineup of opponents. Earlier in the same event she beat IM Olga Badelka, rated above 2400, drew with former European Women's Champion GM Nino Batsiashvili, and beat FM Ena Cvitan of Croatia and Arina Budiak of Lithuania.

The IM title itself requires three qualifying norms plus a FIDE rating of 2400 — and unlike women-only titles, it's open to players of any gender, which is what makes Bodhana's result a genuine outright record rather than a category-specific one.

"I can only describe Bodhana as a generational talent," said IM Malcolm Pein, the ECF's Director of International Chess. "It's remarkable that she is more than matching Judit Polgar's achievements at a similar age and breaking her records, even if we live in different times. It's worth noting that Bodhana is the seventh youngest player, boy or girl, to become an International Master."

A second record in two months

This wasn't even Bodhana's first headline this year. In September, she became the youngest player ever to qualify for the Woman Grandmaster title, at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan — where she scored 8 out of 11 playing board one for England's women's team, losing only once against elite international opposition.

Taken together, the two results put her in rare company: a player still in primary school who has already out-paced the record books of both the open and women's sections of competitive chess. Polgar, for context, went on to become the strongest female player in history and the first woman to break into the world's top 10 overall — the kind of career arc that gives Bodhana's early numbers their weight.

Chess federations have spent years debating how to grow the pipeline of young female talent into the game's top ranks, where women remain heavily underrepresented among titled players. A result like this one tends to do more for that pipeline than a policy paper: an 11-year-old outright breaking a 38-year-old record, set by the most famous female player of all time, is hard to argue with.

What happens next is the obvious question. The jump from International Master to Grandmaster is steep, and Bodhana still has a Woman Grandmaster title to formally collect alongside the IM qualification. But a player who has broken two age records in two consecutive months isn't one anyone in chess is betting against.