Georgiev first caught the eye of the chess world in 1983, when he became the World Junior Champion with an unusually strong score of 11½ out of 13. This result automatically gave him the International Master title. Two years later, FIDE awarded him the Grandmaster title. In the process of becoming the Bulgarian Champion of 1984, 1986 and 1989, he rapidly became recognised as Bulgaria's number one player, taking over from Ivan Radulov and eventually giving way to Veselin 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. At the 1988 World Blitz Championship in Saint John, Canada, Kiril Georgiev finished third after eliminating world championGarry Kasparov in the quarterfinal. In the semifinal he lost to Rafael Vaganian. The tournament was eventually won by Mikhail Tal. His record in international competition has been remarkable, considering that he has never quite reached supergrandmaster status. He was a winner at Sarajevo 1986, San Bernardino 1988, Elenite 1992 and the 1993 Budapest Zonal. He repeated his Elenite success in 1995 and won at Belgrade 2000. Since 2000, his achievements have been no less impressive. First at Sarajevo 2001 and first at Bad Wörishofen 2002. At Gibraltar Chess Festival, he was joint winner in 2005 and the outright winner in 2006 with an 8½/10 score. This was also the year that he won a bronze medal at the European Individual Chess Championship. At the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, he finished only a half point off the lead. Accordingly, these results have caused his Elo rating to advance rapidly during 2005 and 2006, reaching 2680 in July 2006, and placing him at number 26 in the World's 100 top players. Georgiev has also participated in the World Chess Championship cycle. 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. He won the Bulgarian championship again for three consecutive years, in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
