the blitz event by a ½ point ahead of Gunina and Kateryna Lagno. 2017–2018: World Championship runner-up Muzychuk came closest to winning the classical Women's World Chess Championship in 2017 in Tehran, where she finished runner-up to Tan Zhongyi. As the 2nd seed, she reached the final without needing tiebreaks, notably defeating 34th seed Alina Kashlinskaya, 7th seed Antoaneta Stefanova, and 3rd seed Alexandra Kosteniuk. Unlike the other matches which were best-of-two classical games, the final match against the 9th seed Tan was played as a best-of-four classical games. After Muzychuk lost the second game with the black pieces, she won the third game with the white pieces, sending the match to tiebreaks as the other two games ended in draws. Tan won the second game of the rapid tiebreaks to clinch the title. At the end of 2017, Muzychuk gained widespread media attention for her decision to boycott the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Saudi Arabia and forgo the opportunity to defend both of her World Championship titles because of the restrictions Saudi Arabia has in place against women, including those related to women's clothing and the incapability of women to go outside without being accompanied by a man. She made the decision to boycott in spite of the tournament having a prize fund five times higher than the previous edition. She commented: Her announcement of the preceding comments on Facebook was shared over 74,000 times and received over 165,000 reactions predominantly in support of her statement. Her decision was also influenced by her feelings about having already competed at the Women's World Championship in Iran earlier in the year where there were similar restrictions on clothing requiring women to wear headscarves. Having had that experience, she did not want to participate in the tournament in Saudi Arabia because she viewed her participation as supporting a society that has discriminating policies against women. The following year in 2018, Saudi Arabia was scheduled to host the tournament again; however, it was moved to Russia less than a month in advance largely due to a separate issue of Israeli players being denied visas needed to compete. Muzychuk returned to the tournament and fared better in the rapid event than the blitz event, finishing in fourth place. For the second consecutive Women's World Championship knockout tournament, Muzychuk faced Stefanova and Kosteniuk in back-to-back rounds, this time as the 4th seed in