World Cadet & Youth Rapid Championships 2023 Girls 08

[LawrenceCooper]

11/11 for Bodhana Sivanandan:

https://chess-results.com/tnr772016.asp ... NG&flag=30
https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tourn ... -g8/11/1/1

[Alan Walton]

At first I thought very impressive then looking at the line-up it is not unsurprising Bodhana got 11/11; looking at the other sections I suspect she would have had a good chance in all the Girl sections, and possibly even in the Boys sections as well

[NickFaulks]

At first I thought very impressive then looking at the line-up it is not unsurprising Bodhana got 11/11

I think you may be putting a bit too much faith in junior ratings. If you played against some of them you might get a surprise.

[Roger Lancaster]

At first I thought very impressive then looking at the line-up it is not unsurprising Bodhana got 11/11

I think you may be putting a bit too much faith in junior ratings. If you played against some of them you might get a surprise.

I rather agree with Nick. In fact, while Bodhana will (again, and rightly) get most of the attention, the England juniors generally did well - none scored under 50% and both Advait Keerthi Kumar and Frankie Badacsonyi scored 7.5/11 to finish just outside the medals in their sections.

[Leonard Barden]

Sivanandan, whose play is steadily improving with the help of a GM coach and who is particularly good in queenless middle games and endings, outclassed almost all her rapid rivals and won every game. Following her 17/17 at Rhodes 2022 and her 11/11 this week, she has now racked up 28 world championship wins in a row (eat your heart out, Bobby Fischer, who won only 20 straight in 1970-71).

It will be interesting to see if Sivanandan can make it to 39/39 in the two-day blitz on Saturday and Sunday. Accidents and upsets are frequent in blitz, so it is far from a done deal, but fast speeds are one of her specialities. Her games can be followed live and free online at chess24.com (11am BST start).

6/6 after the first day of blitz....

[NickFaulks]

Meanwhile in the U14s, Stanley Badacsonyi has just beaten one of the Russian IMs and now takes on his colleague.

....which didn't go so well, but it looked to me like a really high quality game until the wheels came off right at the end.

[Leonard Barden]

Mission accomplished (see my previous post) : 11/11 and 39/39.

A curiosity: in Bodhana's last blitz event, the British Women's Blitz in December, she gained a likely world record 328 Fide points in a single day over 11 rounds. Today, with 100 per cent, she gained just 5.

Some of the 1000-1200 or unrated opponents were more like 1300-1400.

Scotland, with only three players, won gold in the open U8 (Louis Cheng) and bronze in the open U10 (Supratit Banerjee, who lives in Surrey and will shortly be transferring to ENG)

[Mick Norris]

Bodhana is on the Chess by the Numbers prodigy watch; if anyone can help with the unknown birthdays these include Yichen Han, Frederick Waldhausen Gordon, Kushal Jakhria, Supratit Banerjee, Bodhana Sivanandan, Rithvik Deepak Ambattu