Kiril Dimitrov Georgiev (Bulgarian: Кирил Димитров Георгиев) (born 28 November 1965 in Petrich) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and three-time national champion. He should not be confused with fellow Bulgarian chess player (no relation) Krum Georgiev.
Kiril Georgiev first caught the eye of the chess world in 1983, when he became the World Junior Champion, thereby gaining the title of International Master. Two years later, he was awarded the International Grandmaster title.
In the process of becoming the Bulgarian Champion of 1984 (shared), 1986 and 1989, he rapidly became recognised as Bulgaria's number one player, taking over from Radulov and eventually giving way to Topalov. He has represented his country at the Chess Olympiad many times, playing on either board 1 or 2. Exceptionally, in 2002 he played for Macedonia, while he was temporarily resident there.
His record in international competition has been remarkable, considering that he has never quite reached supergrandmaster status (Elo 2700 or above). He was a winner at Sarajevo 1986 (and would meet board boy Ivan Sokolov there again, some 15 years later), San Bernardino 1988, Elenite (Burgas) 1992 (ahead of Sokolov, Topalov, Dorfman, Razuvaev and Kotronias) and the 1993 Budapest Zonal (ahead of J. Polgár and Ftáčnik). He repeated his Elenite success in 1995 (with Topalov, ahead of Short, Gulko and Dolmatov) and won at Belgrade 2000 (ahead of Beliavsky and Andersson).
Since 2000, his achievements have been no less impressive. First at Sarajevo 2001 (his first Category 16 tournament win - ahead of Topalov, Smirin, Dreev and Ivan Sokolov) and first at Bad Worishofen 2002. At Gibraltar, he was joint winner (with Aronian, Efimenko, Shirov and Sutovsky) in 2005 and the outright winner in 2006 (ahead of Short, Sutovsky, Shirov, Akopian and Bologan) with an imposing 8.5/10 score. This was also the year that he won a bronze medal at the European Individual Chess Championship (behind Zdenko Kozul and Vassily Ivanchuk). At the Moscow Aeroflot Open, he finished only a half point off the lead.
Accordingly, these fine results have caused his Elo rating to advance rapidly during 2005 and 2006, reaching 2680 (at July 2006) and placing him at number 26 in the (FIDE) World's 100 top players.
Georgiev has also participated in the World Chess Championship. In 1990, he qualified for the Interzonal Tournament in Manila and placed a creditable 14th out of 64, surpassing expectation and losing only to Alexei Dreev. At Groningen in 1997, he lost in round 4 to Loek Van Wely. In December 2009, he tied for 1st-4th with Georg Meier, Julio Granda and Viktor Láznička in the 19th Magistral Pamplona Tournament. In 2010, he came third at the World Chess Open in León. In 2011 he won the 29th Andorra Open.
In 2009, he broke the world record for the most simultaneous chess games played: 360 games in just over 14 hours. He won 280, drew 74 and lost 6 for a total score of 88%. A score of at least 80% was required for the record to be accepted. In the same year he received the certificate from Guinness World Records.