Valentin Dragnev


Valentin Dragnev, Mitropapokal 2019
Association	Austria Austria
Born	March 5, 1999 Vienna
title	International Master (2016) Grand Master (2018)
Current Elo rating	2553 (August 2020)
Best Elo rating	2553 (December 2019)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Valentin Dragnev (born March 5, 1999 in Vienna ) is an Austrian chess player .

successes

Valentin Dragnev learned to play chess as a child in a family circle. He gained his first tournament experience in 2008 at the age of 9, and won the first competition in 2010. In 2011, he finished 2nd at the Vienna U12 championships and thus became national champion, which was followed by 2nd place at the Austrian U12 championships on. In 2012 Dragnev won the U14 state championships in Vienna, and a year later, at the age of 13, he managed the feat of winning both the U14 and U16 / U18 competitions at regional level. At the youth state championships in 2014, he took 2nd, 1st and 1st places in the U16 age group (tournament chess ), 1 ( rapid chess ) and 2 ( blitz chess ), and in 2015 he took 2nd, 1st and 1st place in the same competitions 2013 (U15) as the highlight of the triumph at the U16 European Rapid Chess Championship 2014 in Tallinn : Together with Florian Mesaros , who won the U14 competition, Dragnev became the first Austrian ever to win a European Championship title in chess. Two years later he reached 2nd place in the U18 class in Novi Sad in both rapid and blitz chess, won the team competition with the Austrian team and the unofficial "superfinal" of all medal winners. At the U16 World Championships he reached places 16 (2014, South Africa ) and 14 (2015, Greece ) in tournament chess , at the U18 World Championships in 2016 in Russia he was 6th, and at the U20 World Championships in Italy in 2017 he reached his starting position 44. In February In 2020 Dragnev was the best-placed Austrian at the International Chess Open in Graz and thus won the national championship title played out in this tournament .

title

In 2011 Dragnev began structured chess training and then belonged to the youth cadres of the Vienna Chess Federation and the Austrian Chess Federation. Towards the end of the 2011/12 season, he played for SK Ottakring for the first time in the 2nd Bundesliga East and in the Wiener Landesliga, the top division of the Vienna team championships . The year before he had played there in the lowest class. In 2013 he had more than 2000 Elo points for the first time , at the beginning of 2014 he beat three international champions at the Open in Prague , and in the same year he jumped the 2300 Elo hurdle, making him the youngest FIDE champion at the age of 15 advanced in Austrian chess history.

Dragnev earned all three norms necessary for the IM title in 2015: In February he defeated two grandmasters in Gibraltar , the other norms followed in June in Budweis and in August at the Vienna Chess Open in Vienna, where he lost only one of nine games and achieved an Elo performance of 2539. After reaching the required Elo rating of 2400, he was awarded the title "International Master" by the World Chess Federation FIDE at the end of March 2016 . Again Dragnev was the youngest Austrian to date to succeed, he took this record from Markus Ragger .

At the end of 2016 Dragnev took 2nd place at the Open in Zadar . With 6.5 points from 9 games and an Elo performance of 2627, the 17-year-old got his first GM standard. At the beginning of February 2017 he appeared in the FIDE rating list for the first time with more than 2500 Elo. At the same time, the Rock of Gibraltar again proved to be good ground for him, where he u. a. fixed his second GM norm with a win against Vasyl Ivanchuk . A year later, he only missed a GM norm in the final round. He finally achieved the third and last required GM norm in the German Chess League 2017/18 . In July 2018 he was awarded the title of Grand Master.

Clubs and national team

In the Austrian Bundesliga , Dragnev continues to play for SK Ottakring, in the German Bundesliga since 2015/16 for FC Bayern Munich and in the Czech Extra League since 2017/18 for the ŠK DURAS BVK Královo Pole .

Valentin Dragnev first appeared in the national team at the 2016 Mitropa Cup , when he remained unbeaten in all of his eight matches (four wins, four draws, rating 2638). Also in 2016 he played seven games for Austria (+4 = 2 −1) at the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku .