Muzychuk Anna

Born: February 28, 1990 | Federation: Ukraine | Rating: 2526

Anna Muzychuk is the fourth woman in history to reach 2600 Elo points. She collected all possible ranks in rapid and blitz chess, and she is also the 2017 World vice-champion. She finished 7th in the previous edition of the Women’s Grand Prix, and she qualified to the current one thanks to reaching semi-finals in the FIDE Women’s World Cup 2021 in Sochi.

Anna was born on February 28, 1990, in Stryi, Lviv Region, Ukraine. Her parents, chess candidate masters, were coaches conducting classes at a local sports school for children and youngsters in the adjacent village of Ugersko. They made little Anya familiar with the game; a bit later, her younger sister Mariya started playing, too.

Anna Muzychuk took medals and first prizes in many world youth championships and won as many as five European youth championships. At the age of 12, Anna became an international master and two years later, a grandmaster. In 2003, she won the Ukrainian women's championship and repeated that achievement in 2014.

Between 2003 and 2014, she represented the Slovenian Chess Federation in the international arena and then returned under the Ukrainian flag. She is World Women's Junior Champion (2010), Two-Times World Blitz Champion (2014, 2016) and World Rapid Champion (2016). When playing on the first board of the Ukrainian national team at the World Chess Olympiad, she won silver in 2018 and twice received the bronze award (2014 and 2016). In 2016, she also won the gold for the best result on the first board.

In the 2017 at the World Women's Championship, A. Muzychuk made it all the way to finals, where she lost to the Chinese chess player Tan Zhongyi in a persistent struggle.

At the end of the same year, Anna Muzychuk decided to boycott the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Saudi Arabia despite being the current women's champion in these two disciplines. Her Facebook post on the subject broke all records in the Ukrainian sector of that social network: it collected more than 160,000 likes and was shared by more than 70,000 people.

"The age gap between me and my sister Mariya is two and a half years. Those who know us say that we're totally different. She is fast and I'm calm. But we're on really good terms. We practice together, never conflict, we just argue a little bit sometimes. A few times we played against each other in the rapid chess competitions, but I don't want to compete with my sister" (A. Muzychuk).

Anna Muzychuk holds the honorable FIDE Caissa award as the best women's chess player in 2016.

In June 2019 Anna Muzychuk took second place at the FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament (Kazan, Russia).

Like her sister, she has been based in Valencia (Spain) since the war broke. She defended the second board of the Ukrainian team that won the Chennai Chess Olympiad.