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Year seven student Bodhan Sivanandan of Harrow School produced a historic performance on Saturday when she finished second in the UK Women’s Blitz Championship at Leamington Spa. She was the top English player in this open competition, Olga Mirzoeva, 41, a former Moscow women’s champion who now lives in London and plays under the neutral FIDE flag. A “blitz” was defined as three minutes per player for the entire game, plus an increment of two seconds per move.
Sivanandan, who is already eight under-8 girls world champions in quick and blitz, added to her growing reputation by leading well in many of England’s women’s internationals. She led most of the final, reaching 8.5/9, before blundering into a better position against chess broadcaster and author Natasha Regan. The only other loss came to Mirzoeva in her total of 11/14. All 15 finalists had previously placed first or second in regional qualifiers.
GM Emil Sutowski, chief executive of Global Body Fide, described her result as “fantastic”. England’s most famous player, Nigel Short, tweeted: “I don’t like to overpraise young players, but he looks like a really big talent”.
Sivanandan’s overall performance was rated at 2076 FIDE blitz points, master standard, and she scored 328 points, which may be the record for FIDE rating improvement in a single day. Her best win was a classic example of active defense against an early attack.
In 1938, 12-year-old Elaine Saunders went close to a draw with world champion Alexander Alekhine in their singles performance, while Akshay Kalayalhan won the British Women’s title at age 11, but Sivanandan’s result in seven was only surpassed by Hungary’s legendary Polgar sisters. Judith Polgar, the all-time No. 1 woman, beat a master at seven while playing blindfolded.
ECF runs an acceleration program for its best young talent, and Sivanandan hopes to join it for 2023. She is mentored by international master Ali Mortzawi and Steven Coles of Harrow CC. More is needed to realize her full potential, but ECF lacks government backing so that can only happen in the unlikely event that a private or commercial sponsor comes forward to back its extraordinary promise.
Jonathan Spielman, a former world semi-finalist, won the Open Blitz title on a tie-break from Eldar Gasanov of Ukraine. Scotland’s top junior Freddie Gordon, 12, did well in fourth place.
Since the ECF launched its annual UK Blitz Championship in 2018, with qualifiers held in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast as well as major English cities, interest has continued to grow, and for Sivanandan this week’s extra publicity will be a further boost. Speed events are becoming increasingly popular in current chess, not least because of the rising costs of traditional tournaments spread over a week or fortnight.
The latter still hold supreme status, including Hastings, whose annual New Year Congress has continued for a century apart from the war years, and which will resume later this month, with 12 grandmasters already entered for the main event. .
Puzzle 2498
Gyula Breyer vs Cornell Havasi, Budapest 1918. White to move and win. Both kings are exposed, but White can strike first.
Click here For the solution
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