While being a promising young chess talent, he was for a period coached by the world-class chess trainer
Mark Dvoretsky. Dreev was
world under 16 champion in 1983 and 1984, and the
European junior champion in 1988. In 1989 he became a grandmaster, won a strong tournament at Moscow (+5 =5 −1) and made his first appearance in the
Russian Chess Championship. He played in the prestigious 2002 match
Russia versus Rest of the World and contributed a plus score, although the Russian team went on to lose the match. He was the winner at
Dos Hermanas 2001 and at
Esbjerg 2003. Dreev's best performance in the Russian Championship was in 2004 at Moscow when he finished third (+4 =5 −2). This tournament was won by
Garry Kasparov. In 2007 he won the 5th Parsvnath Open in
New Delhi. Dreev won the Magistral Casino de
Barcelona round-robin tournament in 2008. In 2011 he won the
Cento Open on tiebreak score. Dreev won the European
Rapid Chess Championship of 2012 in
Warsaw. In May 2013 he tied for 1st–8th with
Alexander Moiseenko,
Evgeny Romanov,
Alexander G Beliavsky,
Constantin Lupulescu,
Francisco Vallejo Pons,
Sergei Movsesian,
Ian Nepomniachtchi,
Hrant Melkumyan and
Evgeny Alekseev in the
European Individual Chess Championship. He competed in the
Chess World Cup 2013 in
Tromsø, where he reached the third round and was eliminated by the eventual runner-up,
Dmitry Andreikin. Dreev knocked out
Sergei Azarov and
Wang Hao in rounds one and two respectively. In October of the same year, Dreev won the 3rd Indonesia Open Chess Championship in
Jakarta. In January 2016, Dreev tied with
Baskaran Adhiban and
Eltaj Safarli for first place in the Tata Steel Challengers Tournament in
Wijk aan Zee. However, because of his better tiebreak, Adhiban qualified for the following
Tata Steel Masters Tournament. In 2018 Dreev won the Fall Chess Classic A tournament in
St. Louis, US with a score of 6½/9, one point ahead of the nearest follower,
Lázaro Bruzón. He has represented Russia in five
Chess Olympiads between 1992 and 2004, with the Russian team winning gold medals in 1992, 1994, and 1996, and silver in 2004. His combined score from those events is +15 =23 −6 (60.2%). ==Books==