Dmitry Andreikin’s career is stacked with genuinely remarkable results — a World Cup final, two Russian titles, and one of the most talked-about blitz games of the modern era. Here’s a fact sheet you can trust: everything below is drawn from reliable sources and dated where it matters. Perfect for settling a chess argument or just impressing your club.
The headline records
- A peak of 2743. Andreikin’s career-high classical rating of 2743 (2016) placed him firmly inside the world’s top 20 — elite company by any measure.
- 2013 World Cup finalist. He reached the final of the 2013 Chess World Cup, surviving a 128-player single-elimination gauntlet before losing the four-game final to former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, 1½–2½.
- A Candidates player. That World Cup run qualified him for the 2014 Candidates Tournament — the eight-player event that decides who challenges for the World Championship — where he finished on an even score.
- Two-time Champion of Russia. He won the ferociously tough Russian Championship in 2012 and 2018, beating fields packed with world-class grandmasters.
Personal & background facts
- Full name: Dmitry Vladimirovich Andreikin. He was born on 5 February 1990 in Ryazan, Russia (then part of the Soviet Union).
- A childhood world champion. He won the Under-10 division of the World Youth Chess Championship back in 1999 — elite pedigree from the very start.
- Grandmaster at 17. He earned the GM title in 2007, right on the timeline of a genuine top-tier talent.
- World Junior Champion. In 2010 he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Chotowa, Poland, a traditional launchpad to the world elite.
The speed-chess assassin
Here’s the fact that sets Andreikin apart: he’s one of the deadliest fast-chess players alive. At the 2019 World Blitz Championship, Magnus Carlsen dominated the field and won the title — but he lost exactly one game the whole event, and it was to Dmitry Andreikin, the only player to beat him. It’s the perfect encapsulation of Andreikin at speed: fearless, intuitive, and completely unbothered by an opponent’s aura.
He backs that reputation up with hardware: he’s a European Blitz Champion (2016), and his blitz rating has climbed into the world’s top handful of players (peaking above 2780 and reaching the world’s top 15 in blitz on the FIDE rating lists around 2020). When the clock is short, few players in history have been more dangerous.
Tournament & title facts
- A 2852 performance. At the 2014 Tashkent FIDE Grand Prix, Andreikin won outright with 7/11, finishing ahead of Hikaru Nakamura, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Fabiano Caruana, and eight other elite grandmasters — a 2852 performance rating.
- The undefeated underdog. At the 2013 Tal Memorial, he was the lowest-rated player in the field and still finished the event without a single loss, beating former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik in a classical game.
- A fixture of the Russian elite. For over a decade he’s been among the highest-rated players in one of the deepest chess nations on earth, right alongside stars like Ian Nepomniachtchi.
The fighting side
For all his practical, solid tendencies, when Andreikin wants to unbalance a game and play for a win with Black, he reaches for the flexible, combative Sicilian Defense — often Taimanov-style setups that keep the position rich and full of fight.
Why the 2013 World Cup run still gets talked about
It’s worth lingering on that 2013 World Cup, because it’s the result that defines his classical career. The World Cup format is uniquely cruel — 128 players, straight knockout, where every round is a mini-match and a single off day ends your tournament. Andreikin, not a pre-event favorite, kept winning match after match, weathering the nerves of tiebreak playoffs, all the way to the final against Kramnik. Even in defeat, reaching that final over such a brutal gauntlet was a career-defining achievement — and the reward, a Candidates spot, put him a stone’s throw from a World Championship match. Read more about that run in his best games.
The practical fighter, in a nutshell
What makes Andreikin’s story a little different from the other names at the top is how he got there. He didn’t ride a wave of pre-prepared theoretical bombs or a single freakish rating spike — he built an elite career on intuition, nerve, and practicality. He reaches positions he understands, refuses to be intimidated by big names, and is at his most dangerous exactly when the clock is short and the position is messy. It’s a reminder that there’s more than one route to the world’s top 20: preparation and memory are one path, but feel, fearlessness, and toughness are another, and Andreikin is one of the best modern examples of the second kind. Dig into how that plays out move by move in his playing style.
Quick-fire trivia
- His classical peak of 2743 (2016) sits comfortably in the world’s top 20 — a level only a few dozen players in history have reached.
- He’s the answer to a great trivia question: “Who was the only player to beat Magnus Carlsen at the 2019 World Blitz Championship?”
- He’s a two-time Russian Champion (2012, 2018), a title so competitive that plenty of world-elite grandmasters never win it once.
- As a junior he collected both a World Youth (Under-10) title (1999) and the World Junior Championship (2010) — a rare double at the top of youth chess.
Keep exploring
Chase the stories behind the facts: his best games · his playing style · his rating history · the full Dmitry Andreikin profile · or compare him with Russia’s other elite star, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and browse all chess players.
Written and fact-checked by the Chess Lab Academy Editorial Team · Facts verified against Wikipedia, his FIDE profile, and Chess.com, as of July 2026 · Current status stamped “as of July 2026” · Last verified 2026-07-10 · How we verify content.