two years younger, in the nearby smaller city of Stryi. Anna and Mariya both learned to play chess at age two from their parents, both of whom are professional chess coaches who studied coaching at the Lviv State Institute of Physical Culture sports school and have since worked and taught at the school. Their father originally taught them how the pieces move at a park where there was a large human-sized chess board on the ground. Anna began competing at chess at age five, finishing in second place at both her school chess tournament and the under-10 girls' division of the Lviv regional championship. By the time she was ten years old, she could defeat both of her parents. When Muzychuk was about 14 years old, she had been coached by Roman Kozelov for two years. She was still attending school at Stryi Gymnasium at the time, but later stopped attending regularly. Around this time, she also briefly worked with Orest Gritsak, a Ukrainian Grandmaster (GM) who had coached top Ukrainian player Vasyl Ivanchuk. She had not had much opportunity to train with Grandmasters at this point because her family could not afford this level of coaching. At age 14, Muzychuk switched federations from Ukraine to Slovenia due to conflicts she had with the Ukrainian Chess Federation. One of the issues she had was not being put on the Ukrainian national team or given the opportunity to compete at the Women's Chess Olympiad despite winning the Ukrainian Women's Chess Championship at age 13. Around the same time, Boris Kutin, a Slovenian who was the president of the European Chess Union, offered Muzychuk the opportunity to represent Slovenia, which she accepted. Although she played for Slovenia for the next ten years, she remained based in Ukraine. Chess career 1996–2004: Six-time European Youth champion Muzychuk had a long stretch of success at the European Youth Chess Championships, medalling in nine consecutive years from 1996 at age six to 2004 at age fourteen, including six gold medals. She won the under-8 girls' division in 1996, the under-10 girls' division twice in 1998 and 2000, the under-12 girls' division in 2002, and the under-14 girls' division twice in 2003 and 2004. She won three silver medals at the tournament, two in the under-10 girls' division in 1997 and 1999 behind Nana Dzagnidze and Silvia-Raluca Sgîrcea respectively, and one in the under-12 girls' division in