Anna Hennadiyivna Muzychuk is a Ukrainian chess Grandmaster. Born in 1990, she followed in the footsteps of her older sister, Mariya Muzychuk, who is also an international chess player. Anna began playing at two years old under the tutelage of her father, an International Master of Correspondence Chess.
Anna enjoyed success early on in her chess career. She was awarded the Woman Grandmaster title in 2004, and in 2007 she was given the Grandmaster title. In doing so, he became one of only a handful of female players to achieve this status.
One of Anna's notable achievements is winning the Women's World Rapid Chess Championship in 2016. The following year, she won both Rapid and Blitz titles at the World Blitz & Rapid Championships, becoming the first woman to hold both simultaneously.
She has also achieved success with the Ukrainian national team. Anna competed in four Women's Chess Olympiads, where she won the team silver medal with Ukraine in 2006, and three gold medals as an individual. She represented Slovenia from 2004 to 2014 and since then has represented Ukraine.
In 2017, Anna Muzychuk made international headlines as she decided to forfeit her World Titles in protest of the 2017 World Chess Championships in Saudi Arabia due to concerns about human rights and women's rights in particular. She was not willing to wear an abaya, a dress code in Saudi Arabia for women, or to be accompanied by a man while walking outside. However, this decision had cost her two World Championship Titles, and she dropped significantly in the world rankings.
Anna Muzychuk holds an International Master title in Chess960, a chess variant that randomizes the main pieces' starting positions, and she was the champion in this discipline in 2008.