Meet the 11-year-old who has made chess history

Chess is one of the world's oldest games - and to be a grandmaster of chess is no easy task.

But 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan has just become the youngest woman grandmaster in history.

And the British chess prodigy has no plans to stop.

"I'm happy to do it," she said in an interview with the International Chess Federation (FIDE), "but I want to keep going and keep making history as well, instead of just stopping here."

Bodhana returned to the UK from Uzbekistan on Tuesday morning.

Despite the early return, she told BBC Breakfast she was going straight back to school.

"You have to concentrate a lot," she told the programme.

"I normally don't get nervous, but if I do get nervous I just try and focus on the game and just enjoy it instead of worrying too much about other factors."

Bodhana first started playing chess during the coronavirus pandemic.

She entered her first tournament at Harrow Chess club in 2021.

"When it was 2020, it was Covid, so one of my dad's friends was going back to India, and he had a few toys and books, and he gave them to us," she told the BBC last year.

"And in one of the bags, I saw a chessboard, and I was interested in the pieces.

"I wanted to use the pieces as toys. Instead, my dad said that I could play the game, and then I started from there," she said.

By 2024, she was selected to represent England at the international Chess Olympiad in Hungary.

At 10 years old, Bodhana became the youngest female player to earn the woman international master title.

This is the second highest-ranking title for women players.

Following her performance at the 46th Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan in September, the Fide confirmed that Bodhana is now a woman grandmaster.

She is also Britain's youngest women's chess champion and the youngest person to represent England internationally in any sport.

The next level is the international master title - open to both men and women.

Chess is played between two players.

Each player has 16 game pieces - 1 king, 1 queen, 2 bishops, 2 knights, 2 castles and 8 pawns.

A player's aim is to beat their opponent, either through checkmate or through the opposing player resigning.

Checkmate happens when a king is no longer able to move on the board without being taken by the opposition.

Read more about chess here.

Chess has a long history, although it is not known exactly when the game was invented.

What is known is that an early version of chess was once considered a war strategy game in India in the 7th century.

By the 1800s, the game of chess had evolved and was internationally known.

It became a competitive game, with the first official world championship taking place in the United States in 1886.