Ivan Radulov was a Bulgarian chess Grandmaster. Radulov was born on 21 October 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria, and he passed away on 1 December 2013. He earned his Grandmaster title in 1972 from the FIDE, also known as the World Chess Federation.
Radulov achieved multiple successes in his chess career. He won the Bulgarian Championship five times from the 1960s until the 1980s. Additionally, he was one of the contestants in the first European Individual Chess Championship, which took place in Gijón, Spain, in 2001.
Radulov played for the Bulgarian team in ten Chess Olympiads, the international chess tournament for teams from around the world, spanning from 1962 to 1988. He won the junior team European championship for Bulgaria in the 1960s.
He also represented his country in several other team events, including the World Student Team Chess Championship where he won individual gold in 1958. He participated in the Clare Benedict Chess Cup, a tournament for Western European teams, and won team gold for Bulgaria in 1962.
Internationally, Radulov had multiple victories in places such as Berlin, Varna, and Nice. He won the Baltic chess tournament held in Pärnu, Estonia in 1963. He also served as a chief arbiter at the FIDE World Cup in 1989.
Radulov also contributed to chess literature by being a co-author of three books focusing on the chess openings: the Sicilian Defence, the French Defence, and the Caro-Kann Defence.