Chess in Ukraine

Chess is an abstract strategy game that has been with us since the 15th century. Throughout the past 2 years chess has gained more popularity than ever. Due to the war in Ukraine, I have decided to write this article about Ukrainian chess players, who are famous for being exceptional players and are in a very tough spot right now.

Women

Anna Muzychuk is a 32-year-old chess player, who holds the grandmaster title. Her peak ranking was reaching 2nd in the world in the female leaderboards – 2606 rating. Currently she is in 8th with 2529 rating. She is a three-time world champion in fast chess, having won the Women’s World Rapid Chess Championship once in 2014 and the Women’s World Blitz Chess Championship twice, in 2014 and 2016.

She was introduced to chess as early as two years old by her parents, who are professional chess coaches. By the age of three, she already knew how to play chess. She is truly an exceptional chess player, and she has already done enough to cement her legacy. Thankfully, she is poised for much more.

Mariya Muzychuk is a 30-year-old chess player, who also holds the grandmaster title. She is the younger sister of Anna Muzychuk. She is currently the 5th best female chess player as of May 2022. She has won the most prestigious chess tournament – the Women’s World Chess Championship in 2015. She also won back-to-back Ukrainian national championships in 2013 and 2014.

She is nicknamed “Miss Tactics”, for being able to find sudden tactical lines in multiple games. She is without a doubt one of the biggest names in women’s chess.

Men

Starting the list of male players is the legendary player Vasyl Ivanchuk. He is a 53-year-old grandmaster. His peak ranking is 2787, number 2 in the world. Currently he is rated 2678. He was the number-two player in the world on three separate occasions, 1991, 1992 and 2007. He has also won several of the most prestigious international tournaments, including the Tal Memorial, Gibraltar Masters and many more. Ivanchuk has also won the 2004 European Individual Championship, the 2007 World Blitz championship, and the 2016 World Rapid Championship. He has also defeated every classical world champion after Bobby Fischer – From GM Anatoly Karpov to reigning World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen.

He is nicknamed “Chucky”, for his creative and unpredictable style of play. He is very fond of sacrificing pieces and playing unexpected moves.

He has been called one of the most talented players every by several chess grandmasters. Being mentioned alongside world champion Magnus Carlsen as well as World Champion Viswanathan Anand by Female World Champion Judit Polgar.

Nowadays he is still a very strong grandmaster, he won his eighth Capablanca Memorial in 2019. Scoring 7/10, ahead of several well-known competitors.

Kirill Shevchenko is a Ukrainian grandmaster. He is 19 years old. He reached his GM title, when he was 14 years, nine months and 23 days old, placing him on the list of the youngest grandmasters, he is currently 34th.

He has been sharing a lot of information about the war and is helping Ukrainian chess clubs.

Olexander Bortnyk is a 26-year-old Ukrainian grandmaster. He is rated 2604. He is mostly known for being an astonishing player online. As of writing this article he is 5th on the chess.com leaderboard in bullet and is 17th in blitz. He often features on streams of other great players such as Hikaru Nakamura or Daniel Naroditsky, due to being a very tough opponent.

Another phenomenal chess player from Ukrainian descent is Sergey Karjakin, however due to his controversial opinion about the war I prefer not to include him.

Krzysztof Kinowski