Kiril Dimitrov Georgiev was born in Petrich. He was awarded the IM title in 1983 and the GM title in 1985. He was World Junior Champion in 1983 and has been Bulgarian champion five times: in 1984, 1986, 1989, 2014 and 2015. In January 1993 he was ranked the number 9 player in the world (rating was 2660). His current ranking within Bulgaria can be seen at http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtm....
Tournaments
In tournaments he came 4th at Wijk aan Zee 1985, 2nd at Plovdiv 1985, 1st at Sarajevo in 1986, 3rd at Leningrad 1987, and 1st at San Bernadino 1988, Elenite 1992 and 1995 and the 1993 Budapest Zonal. He also won at Belgrade 2000 (ahead of Alexander Beliavsky and Ulf Andersson) and came first at Sarajevo 2001 (his first Category 16 tournament win - ahead of Veselin Topalov, Ilya Yulyevich Smirin, Alexey Dreev and Ivan Sokolov with a 2789 performance rating) and first at Bad Worishofen 2002. He was joint winner (with Levon Aronian, Zahar Efimenko, Alexey Shirov and Emil Davidovich Sutovsky) at the Gibraltar Masters (2005) and the outright winner at the Gibtelecom Chess Festival (2006) (ahead of Nigel Short, Sutovsky, Shirov, Vladimir Eduardovich Akopian and Viktor Antonovich Bologan) with 8.5/10. This was also the year that he won a bronze medal at the 7th European Individual Championship (2006) (behind Zdenko Kozul and Vassily Ivanchuk). At the Aeroflot Open (2006), he finished only a half point off the lead with 6/9. In 2008, he won the Pozivni kup u cast Dana Elektroprivrede Crne Gore in Niksic and the International Open in Montenegro, and came second at the Magistral Ciutat de Barcelona Casino de Barcelona behind Dreev. In 2009, he won the XXIX Open Internacional Villa de Benasque on count back from Zaven Andriasian , Mihail Marin and Geetha Narayanan Gopal, won the XXIV Open Internacional d'Escacs Ciutat de Balaguer on count back from Eduardo Patricio Iturrizaga Bonelli and was =1st (4th on count back) with Georg Meier, Julio Ernesto Granda Zuniga and Viktor Laznicka in the 19th Magistral Pamplona Tournament.
In 2010, he came =1st (3rd on count back) at the 2nd memorial GM Nino Kirov in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, came third at the 38th World Open (2010) in León, was runner up to Boris Nikolov Chatalbashev in the Bulgarian Championship, and won the 30th Open Internacional de Ajedrez "Villa de Benasque" 8-17 July 2010 on count back ahead of Eltaj Safarli with 8.5/10 and a 2717 performance. He scored 7/11 in the Serbian League 2010, and 6/7 in the 19th Croatian team Championships. 2011 started with a solid =5th (10th on count back), scoring 7/10 in the Tradewise Gibraltar (2011), but he faltered in the 12th European Individual Championship (2011), scoring only 6.5/11 (TPR 2589). After some reasonable results in the Italian and Bulgarian team championships, he competed in the 41st International Tournament in Sarajevo, Bosnia, scoring 5.5/9, two points off the lead, and in the XXXIV Barbera Del Valles International Open in Italy coming second with 7/9 behind Georgian GM Levan Aroshidze. Also in July 2011, he won the 29th International Open in Andorra with 7.5/9 (TPR 2722). He finished 2011 with =1st at the International Open at Zaragossa in Spain, scoring 7.5/9. In January 2012, Georgiev placed =1st at the 23rd International Open at Roquetas de Mar in Spain with 7/9, and then followed in February 2012 with =1st at the 34th International Open Bulgarian Chess Championship "Georgi Tringov Memorial", scoring 7.5/9. He finished with 7.5/11 at the 13th European Individual Championship (2012) and subsequently won the Open Karposh 2012 in Skopje with 7.5/9 (+6 =3). In June 2012, he scored 6.5/9 in the Golden Sands (2012), more or less on rating par. In July 2012, he scored 5/6 to win the 11th Bergamo Open in Italy and then came =1st with 7/9 at the 30th International Open in Andorra. In August 2012, he scored 5.5/7 at the Vienna Open 2012, a half point off the lead, and in March 2013, he scored 6/9 at the Karpos Open, a point from the lead. In July 2013, he won the Bergano Open and wound up 2013 by winning the FE 16 Citta' di Padova in Italy, with 7/9, restoring him to the top 100 for the start of 2014 and placing =2nd at the 37. Zurich Weihnachtsopen Masters with 5.5/7.
2014 started off disastrously for Georgiev, scoring only 5.5/10 (+5 -4 =1) at the Tradewise Gibraltar (2014), losing a massive 32 rating points. However in April 2014, he was outright winner at the powerful Karpos Open 2014 held in Skopje in Macedonia. In May 2014, he won the Bulgarian Championship for the fourth time, and repeated that feat almost a year later to take the national title for a fifth time. In November 2014 he was =1st alongside Zdenko Kozul at the Durres International Open 2014 with 7.5/9. In March 2015, he came =2nd at the Karpos Open 2015 with 7/9.
Team Events
<Olympiads> Georgiev has participated in every Olympiad from 1984 to 2012, usually on board 1 or 2. Apart from the 2002 Olympiad, where he was top board for Macedonia, he has played for Bulgaria.
<Other National Team Events> He has also participated in all the biennial European Team Championships since 1983, barring 1997, 2001 and 2009, winning two individual bronze medals (in 1983 and 2003) and one individual gold medal (in 1999 when Bulgaria came 4th, its best result in the 3 decades since 1983.
<Balkaniads> Georgiev won gold on board 1 for Bulgaria in the Junior Balkaniads (between Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia) of 1981 and 1982, also helping his team to bronze and gold at those events. At the senior Balkaniads of 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1988, he played board 1 in the last three events, and in total won 2 individual golds and an individual bronze, and 2 team golds, one team silver and one team bronze.
<Leagues> He has played in the European Club Cup every year since 2000 except 2011, winning team gold with his ŠK Bosna Sarajevo club in 2000. He has played with the Italian team, Obiettivo Risarcimento Padova, since 2010 on board 2 behind Hikaru Nakamura. He also played one season in the Russian Premier League with the Youth of Moscow club, scoring a bronze medal for board 3. In 2003, he played a season in the Bosnia and Herzegovina League scoring individual and team gold for his team ŠK Bosna Sarajevo. He had a personally successful 2013 season in the Serbian and Croatian leagues, playing for the Metalac Takovo team in the former (scoring 7/9) and for the ŠK Vukovar '91 team in the latter (scoring 6/9). In the 2014 Serbian League played in August and September, he played top board for SK Metalac Takovo - Gornji Milanovac, which came seventh out of twelve in the competition, personally scoring a rating neutral 6/11, repeating that performance in 2015. Georgiev has played in the Bulgarian Team Championships since 1988.
World Championship competition
In 1990, he qualified for the Interzonal Tournament in Manila and placed 14th out of 64, losing only to Alexei Dreev. At the World Championship Knockout Matches held in Groningen in 1997, he lost in round 4 to Loek van Wely after defeating Boris Valeryevich Alterman in round 2 and Vadim Markovich Milov in round 3 (he was seeded straight into round 2). At the 2000 World Championship Knockout Tournament in New Delhi, Georgiev defeated Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu before losing to Topalov. At the 2001-02 World Championship Knockout event in Moscow, he defeated Fouad El Taher and Lazaro Bruzon Batista before losing to the eventual winner Ruslan Ponomariov . He was defeated in the first round of the FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament (2004) by Aleksander Wojtkiewicz. At the World Chess Cup (2007), he defeated Susanto Megaranto in Round 1 and Rustam Kasimdzhanov in the second round before losing to the eventual winner, Gata Kamsky in the third round.
Rapids
In 2009, he won the III Memorial Vicente Sebastián with 7/8 and immediately followed this up with a 7.5/8 win at the IV Memorial Vicente Sebastián and in 2010 he won the Gran prix Slavia blitz Sofia.
Simul
In 2009, he broke Zsuzsa Polgar 's 4 year old world record for the most simultaneous chess games played: 360 games in just over 14 hours with a +280 =74 -6 (88%) result.* However, that record lasted only a few months before it was broken in turn by Morteza Mahjoob.
* http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail...
Wikipedia article: Kiril Georgiev
Kibitzing
