Krassimir Gandev is one of the best and high class Bulgarian chess composers. His father taught him how to play chess when he was only three and a half and later when he was 15 he taught him bridge where he reached a very high sports level.

He was born on 21^st March 1946 in Stara   Zagora. His parents moved to live there after the great bombardment of Sofia on 10^th January 1944. They returned to the capital twelve years later. Gandev graduated from an elite technical school in Sofia in 1965 and in 1974 he finished his higher education in economics. He worked as a financial inspector, expert, senior expert, senior financial inspector, head of department, and auditor in the Bulgarian National Bank for many years.

            Gandev made his first steps in chess composition in 1966 when he met Petko Petkov in Sofia and the following active cooperation and contacts which he maintained with other famous Bulgarian composers and also with editors of foreign magazines contributed to his quick advancement in this art. His contribution in West Germany was exceptionally successful and his chess problems were published and accepted with great triumph in magazines such as “Schach Echo”,”Feenschach” and “Die Schwalbe”. His style of composing was distinguished with his originality of ideas and perfect form. He liked using the fairy condition “Circe” and created exclusive masterpieces in this field and his favorite theme was “Allumwandlung” with which he realized dozens of incredible problems.

            Gandev won a great number of championship prizes and in 1977 he became the first official Bulgarian champion in solving of chess problems in the chess solving championship organized by the chairman of the chess composition commission of the Bulgarian chess federation engineer Nikolay Dimitrov. The idea and the way of carrying out the championship were appreciated and in September the same year the first World chess solving championship was carried out.

            Krassimir Gandev was given the title “international master of chess composition” in 1988 and by now he has 59.33 FIDE Album points. But when the GM title was very near and absolutely real objective a long pause followed which has been for nearly two decades now due to business and health reasons. However during the last years the prominent Bulgarian chess composer has been active again and has begun composing so his exceptional chess problems make glad the admirers of this art again.  At the moment Gandev is preparing a book with selected chess problems of his and it is expected to be published in 2012.