Fifty Moves Level, Then a Fork: Goryachkina Stops 11-Year-Old Bodhana at the European Club Cup

Photo: Eteri Kublashvili / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

For 50 moves, an 11-year-old matched the strongest player in the women's section, move for move. For ten of those moves, Bodhana Sivanandan had less than a minute on her clock. Then one bishop move let Aleksandra Goryachkina give away her queen on purpose and win the game with a knight.

Goryachkina beat Sivanandan in 77 moves on top board in Round 1 of the 2026 European Chess Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro, on Saturday, 17 October. Goryachkina, rated 2536, is the highest-rated player in the women's section and played a Women's World Championship match in 2020. Sivanandan, from England, is rated 2382. The game was part of a team match: Goryachkina's club, the defending champion Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo, beat the young English team She Plays To Win Lionesses A 3.5-0.5.

The puzzle

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White to move, after 57...Qd6. White gives up the queen and wins. Can you find the two moves?

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Hint: look at the squares a white knight could reach from d5. Which of them would attack two black pieces at once? The answer is below, inside the game.

The Game: Goryachkina vs Sivanandan, Round 1

Aleksandra Goryachkina 1-0 Bodhana Sivanandan, European Chess Club Cup 2026 (Women), Budva, Round 1, 17 October 2026.

A quiet opening

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.cxd5 cxd5. This is the Exchange Slav. Both sides now have the same pawns on the same files. Openings like this are calm, and it is hard for either side to get much.

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After 3...cxd5. The pawns are the same on both sides. That makes the position balanced.

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4.Bf4 Nc6 5.e3 Nf6 6.Bd3 Bg4 7.f3 Bh5 8.Qb3 Qd7 9.Bb5 e6 10.Nc3 Be7 11.Rc1 Rc8 12.Na4 O-O 13.Kf2. Goryachkina never castled. Her king stepped to f2 by hand instead. With pawns on d4 and d5 locking the center, a king there is hard to attack.

13...Bg6 14.Ne2 Nh5 15.Nc5 Bxc5 16.Rxc5 Nxf4 17.Nxf4 Qd6 18.Bxc6 Rxc6 19.Rhc1 Rxc5 20.Rxc5 b6 21.Rc1. Lots of pieces were traded. Each side had a queen, a rook and one minor piece left.

Fifty level moves and a racing clock

21...f6 22.Qa4 Qe7 23.a3 Bf7 24.Qa6 e5 25.Ne2 Qd7 26.h3 Re8 27.Rc3 h6 28.b4 Be6 29.b5 Qe7 30.Qa4 Qd7. White pushed her queenside pawns, and Black pushed in the center. Our Stockfish 17.1 run at depth 20 kept the game close to level the whole time. Through the first 50 moves, it never had White ahead by even one pawn.

The clock was another story. Sivanandan had used much more time. From move 31 to move 40, she had less than a minute left after every move, and only the 30 seconds she got after each move kept her going. She still found good moves.

31.Rc6 Re7 32.Qb4 Bf7 33.a4 Re6 34.Rc1 Re8 35.Ke1 Bg6 36.Rc3 Bf5 37.Kd2 Bg6 38.Qb3 Kh7 39.Ke1 Bf7 40.Kf2 Re7. After move 40, each player got 30 more minutes, and the game went on.

41.Rc6 Qe8 42.Qc3 Bg6 43.g4 Qf7 44.Ng3 Re6 45.Rc8 Re8 46.Rxe8 Qxe8. The rooks came off too.

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After 46...Qxe8. Queen, knight and pawns against queen, bishop and pawns. Our engine rates this as level.

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47.h4 exd4 48.exd4 h5 49.gxh5 Bxh5 50.Qc6 Qf7 51.Nf5 g6 52.Ne3 g5 53.hxg5 fxg5 54.Qxd5. White won the pawn on d5. Here Black had a simple choice. Our engine's best move was 54...Qxd5, trading queens. After 55.Nxd5, a knight against a bishop with pawns on both sides, the game would still be close to level. Sivanandan played 54...Qf6 and kept the queens on. That made defending harder: now White's queen and knight could keep making threats.

The slip, and the queen sacrifice

55.Qb7+ Kg8 56.Qe4 Bg6. This was the move that lost. White was already better here, by more than one and a half pawns. But after 56...Bg6, our engine at depth 22 had White winning by more than seven. Why? The king on g8, the queen on f6 and the bishop on g6 are now all close together, and the white knight is only two jumps away from them.

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After 56...Bg6, White to move. The knight jumps to d5, and from there it attacks the queen on f6.

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57.Nd5. The knight attacks the queen. If 57...Bxe4, then 58.Nxf6+ takes the queen with check, and the knight takes the bishop on e4 next. Black played 57...Qd6 instead. Now we are at the puzzle.

58.Qxg6+. Goryachkina gave her queen for the bishop, with check. Black had only three legal replies, and taking the queen was the best of them. 58...Qxg6 59.Ne7+. That is the point: a knight fork. The knight checks the king on g8 and attacks the queen on g6 at the same time.

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After 59.Ne7+. The knight checks the king and attacks the queen. Black must move the king, and then the knight takes the queen.

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59...Kf7 60.Nxg6 Kxg6. White won Black's queen, and Black took the knight back. The board now had only kings and pawns: four white pawns against three black ones.

The pawn race

61.Kg3 Kf5 62.d5 Ke5 63.Kg4 Kxd5 64.Kxg5 Kc4 65.f4 Kb4 66.f5 Kxa4 67.f6 Kxb5 68.f7 Ka4 69.f8=Q. Both kings ran to eat pawns. The black king took three white pawns, on d5, a4 and b5, but the white f-pawn was alone, and nothing could stop it. It became a queen first.

69...b5 70.Kf4 a5 71.Qc5 b4 72.Ke3 b3 73.Kd2 b2 74.Qc2+ Ka3 75.Kc3 b1=Q 76.Qxb1 a4 77.Qb2#. Black's b-pawn did reach the last row, but the new white queen and king were waiting. White took the new queen at once and finished with checkmate on b2.

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The final position, after 77.Qb2#. The queen checks the king, the white king guards the queen, and the black king has no square left.

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What to Learn from This Game

1. When you are defending, trading queens is often the safest path. On move 54, 54...Qxd5 would have kept the game close to level. With queens on the board, the stronger side has more ways to make threats.

2. Look for squares that hit two pieces at once. After 56...Bg6, a knight on d5 could attack the queen on f6, and a knight on e7 could attack the king on g8 and the bishop on g6 together. Before you move a piece, ask: can a knight jump to a square that attacks it and something else?

3. A queen sacrifice is fine if you win the queen back. 58.Qxg6+ gave the queen away, but 59.Ne7+ won Black's queen straight back. Goryachkina was not losing material. She was trading it for a winning pawn ending.

4. In a pawn race, count the moves. The f-pawn needed four steps to reach f8 from f4, with nobody in front of it. The black king was far away on the queenside. Count before you start the race, not after.

Puzzle answer

58.Qxg6+ Qxg6 59.Ne7+. The queen takes the bishop with check. After the black queen takes back, the knight goes to e7, checks the king and attacks the queen. Black moves the king, and 60.Nxg6 wins the queen. Our engine rates 58.Qxg6+ as the best move, with White winning by about ten pawns.

The rest of Round 1

In the same match, Stavroula Tsolakidou and Elisabeth Paehtz won for Monte-Carlo. Anusha Subramanian held Pia Cramling to a draw for the Lionesses. In the other matches in the women's section, the biggest surprise was Velikova Chess Club, the 18th seed, drawing 2-2 with seventh seed Crvena Zvezda.

The Open section has 108 teams and the women's section 22, which makes 130 teams in all, a record for this event. In the Open, Bayegan Pendik and Alkaloid both won 6-0, and the defending champion SuperChess Romania won 5.5-0.5. Novy Bor won 5-1, but their board four, Nils Grandelius, rated 2603, lost to Slobodan Filipovic, rated 2157.

What comes next

Both sections play seven rounds, one each day until Friday, 23 October. On Sunday, 18 October, Monte-Carlo meets Odlar Yurdu of Azerbaijan in the women's section. In the Open, the top four teams will qualify for the new European Chess Super League in February 2027.

Another game won by a knight fork: the fork that decided the European Women's Rapid title.