Bodhana Sivanandan, the 10-year-old Harrow chess talent, yesterday achieved the best victory yet of her fledgling career when she outplayed Ukraine’s 2015 women’s world champion and 2485-rated grandmaster Mariya Muzychuk, 33, in an impressive 36 moves at the European Women’s Club Cup in Rhodes, Greece.
Sivanandan has already beaten a male GM, Peter Wells, at the 2025 British Championship in Liverpool, but that was a fortuitous win on time in a wildly fluctuating game. The victory against Muzychuk, in contrast, featured a well-prepared line against the Sicilian Defence 1 e4 c5, then a knight sacrifice to keep the black king in centre board, and finally a visually pleasing partnership of White’s queen and rook attackers to force decisive material gain, soon to be followed by checkmate.
Sivanandan’s team, who lost the match 1-3 to the No 2 seeds Turkish Airlines, are named She Plays to Win Lionesses. SPTW is a charity offering free chess coaching to girls of all levels, as well as supporting top girls internationally. It is organised by England women’s coach IM Lorin D’Costa, and invites donations to help its work.
Fide, the global chess body, and Norway Chess have just announced the creation of a new title, the Total World Championship. It will be launched in 2027 and will combine existing rapid and blitz events with a “fast classical” time rate of 45 minutes per player per game, plus a 30-second per move increment.
There are two major implications. First, Fide is trying to rebuild bridges with the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, following their very public falling out earlier this year when Fide refused to agree that the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam winner, most likely the Norwegian, should be listed as an official world champion.
Second, the fast classical time rate is virtually identical with that commonly used in UK evening club championships and matches, which are geared to a three-hour session ending at 10pm. It also makes it possible for international events and even world championships to have two rounds in a day, which was a sticking point in the abortive negotiations for Carlsen to defend the world crown he abdicated in 2022.
It means, at least in theory, that local games and matches which are at present only rated by the English or US chess federations can in future appear on the monthly Fide world list and thus gain a higher status. Do FT chess playing readers welcome this development, or feel that it makes for an over-serious approach? Let us know in the comments.
The reality also is that the title of world champion has been increasingly debased by Fide’s actions in recent years. We already have the classical, rapid and blitz titles, with the new total crown to be added. Indian GM Vidit Gujrathi made a witty Instagram commentary on this, with an imagined conversation between himself and a non-chess player.
In the mid-20th century there was just one global title for juniors, the World Junior Championship for players aged under 20. Four of its winners, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vishy Anand, went on to win the open crown. Now, the World Junior is only hosted as a low profile event in south-east Asia with mainly local entrants. Moreover, it is no longer unique: there are now world titles for age groups from under-8 to under-18 for both boys and girls.
Fide has also introduced the World Corporate Championship for business teams, plus the World Rapid and Blitz Team Championship which took place in London this summer.
Only events for amateurs have sparked a different reaction. The Amateur Chess Organisation is well-established, but Fide does not recognise it. The ACO organises unofficial world championships, staged on Crete or other Aegean Islands, in three categories: Open, Senior 50+, and Senior 65+. Its next events are in May 2026 on the island of Kos, and more details are here.
Puzzle 2646
Richard Newman v Alexander Tolush, Great Britain v USSR, London 1947. How did the English amateur (White, to move) defeat the Soviet grandmaster?
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