Alexander Surenovich Dronov was born in Moscow on October 6, 1946, in the first year after the end of the Second World War, when the country was still in ruins, but everyone felt an unprecedented victorious rise.

He began to play chess at the age of 15 in 1961 the year when Yuri Gagarin made his first flight into space; his first coach was Viktor Alexandrovich Lyublinsky. Until 1987 Alexander took part only in over the board competitions.

In 1987 Alexander switched to correspondence chess and achieved outstanding success. He convincingly won the quarter and semi-finals of the USSR Correspondence Championship. Unfortunately, the final was not held due to the collapse of the USSR. In 1996 Alexander Dronov won the Moscow Correspondence Championship and got the title “Master of Sports of Russia”.

Since 1998 Alexander Dronov represented Russia in ICCF competitions. Making his debut on the first board for the Russian team in the qualifying tournament of the 13th Correspondence Chess Olympiad, he scored 8.5 of 12 points, contributing to the Russian team's reaching to the final of this competition.

In 2003 he was awarded by the title of ICCF IM, in 2005 he acheived the titles of SIM and ICCF GM.

The next stage in his correspondence chess career was the battle for the title of the World Correspondence Chess Champion. In 2006 he brilliantly won the candidate’s tournament and qualified to the final stage. The final of the 22nd World Correspondence Championship was a bitter struggle. Two-times world champion Joop van Oosterom from the Netherlands was striving for his 3rd title, but the championship ended in 2010 with the victory of Alexander Dronov.

 In 2014 Alexander repeated his success, winning the 27th WCC, and in 2016 he was awarded with the highest sporting title of Russia, “Honored Master of Sports”.

Playing for the Russian National Team at Correspondence Chess Olympiads he showed an outstanding result of +20 in five tournaments on the first board (3 finals and 2 preliminaries tournaments).

In 2018 he became the champion for the 3rd time, winning the 29th WCC. The world history of correspondence chess knows two twice world champions, Tõnu Õim (Estonia) and Joop van Oosterom. The Russian Alexander Dronov is the only one three-times world champion.

During his fantastic career, which is going on, Alexander Dronov has won more than 20 international and Russian correspondence tournaments. He has gained a huge number of fans around the world but most loyal fans are his wife and daughter.

Vladamir Perevertkin, ICCF National Delegate for Russia