Михаил Пашинский: The Nc3 Machine
If you have played blitz chess online in the last few years, there is a decent chance you have been on the wrong end of a game against Михаил Пашинский. Михаил Пашинский is a FIDE Master from Ukraine with a peak blitz rating of 2525, an online game count that looks like a phone number, and one very strong opinion about what to do with his king's knight on move one. Spoiler: it goes to c3. Almost always. There are years in his record where 1.Nc3 was played over two thousand times and 1.e4 appeared exactly seven times. Some players open with a principle. Mikhail opens with a signature.
The Opening Repertoire (or: The Sicilian closed, the Modern opened)
As White, Mikhail is a devotee of the Sicilian Defense when he opens 1.e4, particularly the Closed variations, where he has logged over 800 games and a winning percentage north of 52. When he plays his beloved 1.Nc3, the games often transpose into Modern-style setups that have produced a healthy 55 percent score. As Black, he trusts the Modern Defense by the hundreds of games, flanks with the Czech Defense, and is perfectly happy steering everything into the Accelerated Dragon, where his win rate climbs past 52 percent. In bullet, his record in the Sicilian Closed and the Four Knights Game is a flawless 100 percent. His opponents may wish he would vary. He will not.
Rivals, Victims, and One Guy Who Keeps Beating Him
Every long career needs a nemesis, and for Mikhail that is grishchenko59, against whom he has played a staggering 168 games with a losing record. That is not a rivalry, that is a subscription. Meanwhile, gorbunov_gleb (105 wins against 17 losses), funtusov_oleg, and dentsch have spent years feeding his scoreboard. And somewhere, zherebtsova_tatiana is still wondering how she went 77 games against him with only 4 wins and not a single draw to soften the blow.
How He Fights: Endgames, Comebacks, and the 9 AM Power Hour
- Long games, patient games: his average win runs over 72 moves and his endgame frequency is nearly 77 percent, meaning the middlegame is just the walk to the parking lot.
- Nearly impossible to put away: an 87 percent comeback rate and a win rate near 48 percent even after dropping a piece. Mikhail does not lose, he simply arrives late.
- A dignified exit: he resigns early when the position is truly dead, sparing everyone the king walk.
- Circadian chess: his win rate at 9 in the morning is an absurd 65 percent. At 3 AM it collapses to 23 percent. The lesson: challenge Mikhail after midnight, fear him with your coffee.
- A 22-game winning streak sits in the record books, along with an 11-game losing streak he presumably does not discuss at dinner.
The Verdict
A battle-tested FM with a bullet-sharp opening repertoire, iron nerves, and a knight that has seen more action on c3 than most pieces see in a lifetime. Play him in the morning at your own peril. Play him at 3 AM and bring snacks, because the endgame will be long and you will probably lose anyway.