Mariya Olehivna Muzychuk ( uk, Марі́я Оле́гівна Музичу́к; born 21 September 1992) is a Ukrainian

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

grandmaster and

Women's World Chess Champion The Women's World Chess Championship (WWCC) is played to determine the world champion in women's chess. Like the World Chess Championship, it is administered by FIDE. Unlike with most sports recognized by the International Olympic Committee, wh ...

from April 2015 to March 2016. She is also a twice women's champion of Ukraine (2012, 2013), World Team and European Team champion with Ukraine in 2013. Muzychuk has experienced multiple successes with Ukraine at the Women's Chess Olympiad winning gold in

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

, silver in 2018 and bronze in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Career

Born in

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...

, Mariya Muzychuk was first taught chess at age two by her parents and at age three she knew all the chess pieces. At age six, Muzychuk took part in her first chess tournament. Muzychuk won the under-10 girls' section at the 2002

European Youth Chess Championship The European Youth Chess Championship is organized by the European Chess Union (ECU) in groups under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 years old. The first tournament was held in 1991, and the under 8 category was introduced in 2007. Until 2002 there was als ...

Peniscola Peníscola () or Peñíscola (), anglicised as Peniscola, is a municipality in the Province of Castellón, Valencian Community, Spain. The town is located on the Costa del Azahar, north of the Serra d'Irta along the Mediterranean coast. It is a p ...

, Spain. In November 2010 she was ranked as the fifth highest rated under-20 female player in the world. She made it to the top-16 of the 2010 Women's World Chess Championship, but lost to

Dronavalli Harika Harika Dronavalli (born 12 January 1991) is an Indian chess player who holds the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM). She has won three bronze medals in the Women's World Chess Championship, in 2012, 2015 and 2017. Dronavalli was honored with the ...

in an armageddon playoff after a tie in the regular match. Muzychuk won the women's

Ukrainian Chess Championship This is a list of all the winners of the Ukrainian Chess Championship, including those held when Ukraine was a Soviet republic and those held after Ukraine became independent. Players' names listed in parentheses indicate that the player won the to ...

in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, she won the best woman's prize at the Gibraltar Masters tournament, where she also earned a grandmaster

norm Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envi ...

. She won the

Women's World Chess Championship 2015 The Women's World Chess Championship was held from 16 March to 7 April 2015 in Sochi, Russia. It was a 64-player knockout tournament. It was originally scheduled from 11 to 31 October 2014 but problems in finding a sponsor and host city eventually ...

. In the first round, she drew with Yuanling Yuan in the classical games and then defeated her in the tiebreaks. In round two, she drew with Monika Socko in the classical games and defeated her in the tiebreaks. In round three, she defeated former Women's World Chess Champion

Antoaneta Stefanova Antoaneta Stefanova ( bg, Антоанета Стефанова; born 19 April 1979) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and Women's World Champion from 2004 to 2006. She has represented Bulgaria in the Chess Olympiad in 2000 and the Women's Chess ...

in the classical games by a score of 1½–½. In the quarter-final she defeated number one seed Humpy Koneru in the tiebreaks (2½–1½), and then beat

in the semi-final by tiebreaks (3½–2½). In the final she beat

Natalia Pogonina Natalia Andreevna Pogonina (russian: Ната́лья Андре́евна Пого́нина; born 9 March 1985) is a Russian chess player who holds the FIDE title of Woman Grandmaster (WGM). She is the runner-up of the Women's World Chess Ch ...

with a score of 2½–1½. As a result of her victory, she obtained the Grandmaster title and qualified for the

2015 Chess World Cup The Chess World Cup 2015 was a 128-player single-elimination chess tournament held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 10 September to 5 October 2015. Sergey Karjakin won the competition on tie-breaks after a four-game final against Peter Svidler. Both f ...

which was held in

Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

. In 2015, Muzychuk was awarded the Order of Merit, 3rd Class by Ukrainian President

Petro Poroshenko Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko ( uk, Петро́ Олексі́йович Пороше́нко, ; born 26 September 1965) is a Ukrainian businessman and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. Poroshenko se ...

. The holder and the winner of the honorary FIDE award of

Caïssa Caïssa ( a:isa is a fictional (anachronistic) Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess. She was first mentioned during the Renaissance by Italian poet Hieronymus Vida. Vida's poem Caïssa originated in a 658-line poem called ''Scacch ...

as the 2015 best female chess player. The Chess Award of Caïssa, designed and executed by artisans of the Lobortas Classic Jewelry House, was solemnly presented on September 8, 2016 during the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku. She lost her title against

Hou Yifan Hou Yifan ( ; born 27 February 1994) is a Chinese chess grandmaster, four-time Women's World Chess Champion and the second highest rated female player of all time.

in the

Women's World Chess Championship 2016 The Women's World Chess Championship 2016 was a chess match played between Mariya Muzychuk, the defending champion, and the challenger Hou Yifan to determine the FIDE Women's World Champion. The scheduled 10-game match was held from 1 to 14 Mar ...

by 3–6. In 2017 she refused to play in the

Women's World Chess Championship 2017 The Women's World Chess Championship 2017 was a 64-player knock-out tournament, to decide the women's world chess champion. The final was won by Tan Zhongyi over Anna Muzychuk in the rapid tie-breaks. At the FIDE General Assembly during the 42nd ...

in Iran out of protest for being obligated to wear a hijab.

Playing style

2015 Ukrainian postage stamp - Muzychuk sisters

In openings, Muzychuk typically plays King's Pawn Openings as White and the Sicilian Defence and

Dutch Defence The Dutch Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves: :1. d4 f5 Black's 1...f5 stakes a claim to the e4-square and envisions an attack in the middlegame on White's ; however, it also weakens Black's kingside to an extent (especia ...

with Black. Muzychuk has the ability to find unexpected

tactical Tactic(s) or Tactical may refer to: * Tactic (method), a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks ** Military tactics, the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield ** Chess tactics ** Political tacti ...

tricks, which sometimes compensates for flaws in her positional understanding. During her World Championship match against

, Muzychuk was called "Miss Tactics" by the media.

Personal life

She has an older sister,

Anna Muzychuk Anna Olehivna Muzychuk ( uk, Анн́а Оле́гівна Музичу́к; sl, Ana Muzičuk; born 28 February 1990) is a Ukrainian chess player who holds the title of Grandmaster (GM). She is the fourth woman in chess history to attain a F ...

, who is also a leading chess player. Apart from chess, both sisters also play

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Muzychuk, Mariya 1992 births Living people Women's world chess champions Chess grandmasters Female chess grandmasters Chess woman grandmasters Ukrainian female chess players Sportspeople from Lviv Recipients of the Order of Merit (Ukraine), 3rd class