Anna Muzychuk

Anna Olehivna Muzychuk (Ukrainian: Анн́а Оле́гівна Музичу́к; Slovene: Ana Muzičuk; born February 28, 1990)[1][2] is a Ukrainian chess grandmaster. From 2004 to 2014 she played for Slovenia. She is the fourth woman, after Judit Polgar, Humpy Koneru and Hou Yifan, to cross the 2600 Elo rating mark, having achieved a rating of 2606 in July 2012.

Anna Muzychuk
Muzychuk in 2014
Full nameAnna Olehivna Muzychuk
CountryUkraine
Slovenia (2004–2014)
Born (1990-02-28) February 28, 1990
Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
TitleGrandmaster (2012)
FIDE rating2535 (August 2020)
Peak rating2606 (July 2012)
RankingNo. 7 ranked woman (February 2020)
Peak rankingNo. 2 ranked woman (August 2012)
This name uses Eastern Slavic naming customs; the patronymic is Olehivna and the family name is Muzychuk.

Muzychuk won the Women's World Rapid Chess Championship in 2016, and the Women's World Blitz Chess Championship in 2014 and 2016.

Career

Muzychuk was taught to play chess at the age of two by her parents, both professional chess coaches. She played her first tournament at five and in the same year she placed second in the under-10 girls championship of Lviv Oblast.[3]

From 1997 to 2005 she won several medals at Ukrainian, European and World Youth Championships. She won gold in the European Under-10 girls championship in 1998 and 2000, Ukrainian under-10 girls championship in 2000, Ukrainian and European under-12 girls championships of 2002, European Under-14 girls championship in 2003 and 2004, World U16 girls championship in 2005. She took silver at the European Under-10 girls championship in 1997[4] and 1999, European Under-12 girls championship in 2001, World Under-12 girls championship in 2002 and World U14 girls championship in 2004. She was the bronze medalist in the World Under-10 Girls Championship in 2000.

She was awarded the titles of Woman FIDE Master in 2001 and Woman International Master in 2002.

In 2003, Muzychuk also won the Ukrainian Women's Championship.[3] She won the Ukrainian U20 girls championship of 2004.

In 2004, Muzychuk started to play for Slovenia: she was offered a contract by the Slovenian chess federation and was supported by them over the course of the next ten years. She played for the club from Ljubljana and for the Olympiad Slovenian national team. She represented them first in junior and then in adult tournaments, becoming the strongest female chess player in Slovenia and the third best female player in the world. Muzychuk continued to play for Slovenia even when while she lived in Stryi (Ukraine), and her younger sister Mariya, twice represented the Ukrainian national team.[5]

2015 Ukrainian postage stamp featuring the sisters Muzychuk

In 2007, she won the European women's blitz chess championship and finished second in the European women's rapid chess championship, both held in Predeal, Romania.[6]

Muzychuk was awarded the titles of International Master in 2007 and Grandmaster in 2012.

In 2010, she played in the Corus chess tournament Group B, finishing 10th with a score of 5½/13 and a performance of 2583. In the same year, Muzychuk won the World Junior Girls Championship in Chotowa, Poland.[7]

She won the bronze medal in the Women's European Individual Chess Championship of 2012. In the same year Muzychuk took part in the ACP Golden Classic in Amsterdam along with Vassily Ivanchuk, Gata Kamsky, Emil Sutovsky, Le Quang Liem, Krishnan Sasikiran and Baadur Jobava. It was a round-robin tournament in which the rate of play was two hours and half for forty moves followed in case by adjournment.[8] She finished fourth with a score of 3/6 and a rating performance of 2721.[9]

Muzychuk finished fourth in the 2014 Tata Steel Challengers tournament, scoring 8/13 (+4=8-1).[10] In April 2014 Muzychuk won the Women's World Blitz Championship.[11] In May 2014, she returned to the Ukrainian chess federation.[12] Muzychuk won the 2014 Ukrainian women's championship in Lviv.[13] In January 2016, she won the women's first prize at the Masters tournament of the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival.

In December 2016, in Doha, she won the Women's World Rapid Championship,[14] and two days later she defended her Women's Blitz World Championship title.[15]

In March 2017, she finished second in the Women's World Chess Championship 2017 in Tehran.

In October 2017, she won the ACP European Women's Rapid Championship in Monte Carlo.[16] In November 2017 she announced she would boycott the 2017 Women's World Speed Chess Championship, to be held in Saudi Arabia, due to Saudi Arabia's rules regarding women.[17] On her Facebook page she commented:

In a few days I am going to lose two World Champion titles – one by one. Just because I decided not to go to Saudi Arabia. Not to play by someone's rules, not to wear abaya, not to be accompanied getting outside, and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature.[18]

Team competitions

Muzychuk played on the top board for Slovenia in the Women's Chess Olympiads of 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012. In her first Olympiad, in 2004, she defeated, among others, the then-reigning women's world champion, Antoaneta Stefanova. In 2006 the Slovenian team, seeded 17th, finished tenth.

In the 2014 Women's Chess Olympiad, Muzychuk played on the top board for the Ukrainian team which gathered third place behind Russia and China.[19][20] In the 2015 Women's European Team Chess Championship, she contributed to Ukraine's silver medal. In the 2016 Women's Chess Olympiad, team Ukraine won the silver medal and Muzychuk also won the individual gold medal for the best performance on board 1.

Personal life

Her younger sister Mariya was the 2015 Women's World Chess Champion.

She lives in Stryi with her parents and her sister.

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References
  1. Interview with Anna Muzychuk Archived 2016-05-04 at the Wayback Machine Pakchess. 2011-08-21. Retrieved 19 October 2015
  2. Grandmaster title application FIDE
  3. "Meet the Muzychuk sisters". ChessBase. 11 April 2004. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  4. C.to Europeo U10 femminile Italian Chess Federation
  5. "Lagno to Russia, Muzychuk to Ukraine, Sharevich to USA". Chess News Agency. May 2014. Archived from the original on 25 June 2014. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  6. Partac, Elena (2007-08-11). "Viktorija Cmilyte wins European Women's Rapid Championship". ChessBase. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  7. "World Junior and Girls Chess Championships - Chotowa, Czarna 2010". WJCC2010.pl. Archived from the original on 10 February 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  8. Silver, Albert (2012-07-16). "ACP Golden Classic – Tournament for the nostalgic". ChessBase. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  9. "Ivanchuk wins ACP Golden Classic; Giri is Dutch champion". ChessBase. 2012-07-23. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  10. "Standings of Tata Steel Challengers 2014". Tata Steel Chess. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  11. "Anna Muzychuk wins Women's World Blitz Championship". Chessdom. 28 April 2014. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
  12. "Anna Muzychuk to represent Ukraine". chessdom.com. May 7, 2014. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  13. "Yuriy Kuzubov and Anna Muzychuk are 2014 Ukrainian champions". Chessdom. 2014-11-25. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  14. Fischer, Johannes (2016-12-28). "Vassily Ivanchuk is new World Champion in Rapid Chess". ChessBase.
  15. "Karjakin wins FIDE World Blitz Championship, double gold for Anna Muzychuk". Chessdom. 2016-12-31.
  16. "Anna Muzychuk & Alexandra Kosteniuk won the European ACP Women's Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship". www.fide.com. 2017-10-24. Retrieved 2017-12-26.
  17. "Ukrainian Master Boycotts Saudi Women's World Speed-Chess Championships". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  18. Myztchuk, Anna. "In a few days I am going to lose two World Champion titles..." Facebook. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
  19. "Muzychuk Anna on Her Return to Ukrainian Federation and Maidan". chess-news.ru. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  20. "Chess-Results Server Chess-results.com - Tournament-Database". Chess-results.com. 2014-08-14. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
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