Andreas Tryggestad: Bullet Chess, Pterosaurs, and the 4 AM Grind
Who Is Andreas Tryggestad?
Andreas Tryggestad, known to the leaderboard as Andreastrygg22, is an online chess grinder who has logged thousands of games at time controls fast enough to violate labor laws. A devoted bullet player with a serious blitz habit on the side, he has climbed from a four-digit beginner rating in 2017 to a bullet peak of 2642 (2025-10-25), largely through the ancient technique of refusing to stop playing.
The Long Climb
The recorded story begins in March 2017. Within two months he had crammed 51 bullet games into April alone, leapfrogging from 1390 to 2100 in a single calendar month. Then he vanished for most of 2018, presumably to rest and let the chess world miss him. He returned in late 2019, rode the great 2020 online chess boom past 2300 in blitz, cracked the 2400s in 2022, and by 2023 was playing an industrial 800-plus games per year. In September 2024 his blitz rating touched 2650 (2024-09-24), and in October 2025 he added a bullet peak of 2642 (2025-10-25) for good measure.
The Bullet Assembly Line
The numbers back up the obsession: more than 2,000 bullet games, over 1,000 wins, and a 19-game winning streak along the way. Not every win is a masterpiece. Nearly 700 of them arrived the honest, cowardly way: on time. Remarkably, he stays calm while doing it, posting a tilt factor of 9 out of 100, and his worst slump was a mere 9-game losing streak, which for this volume of play is practically zen.
- May 2025 alone: 524 bullet games, roughly 17 per day, every day.
- April 2025: 204 blitz games. Sleep was reportedly rescheduled.
- 691 career wins by timeout versus 623 by checkmate. The flag is a legitimate piece.
The Opening Repertoire, Starring a Pterosaur
As White, Andreas is an apostle of the Nimzo-Larsen Attack, opening with 1.b3 in hundreds of bullet games and scoring over 55%. His other pet system carries the gloriously prehistoric name Colle Rhamphorhynchus Variation, deployed nearly 300 times in bullet. Rhamphorhynchus was a Jurassic flying reptile, which fits: the Colle is old, it glides quietly, and before you notice anything it carries you off. For spice there is the Amar Gambit and the English Opening, where his Agincourt Defense lines win north of 60% in blitz.
As Black, he is famous for playing the Barnes Defense, a.k.a. 1...f6, almost 300 times in bullet and surviving with a winning record. In blitz, respectability returns: the Caro-Kann Defense is his workhorse with more than 200 games and a steady winning margin.
A typical Andreas opening: quiet, space-hungry, and mildly insulting.
Rivals and Victims
Every grinder keeps a ledger. Against Okay he is a merciless 11-1, and vicris141 has been dispatched a flawless 8-0. But the true measure of a player is his nemesis, and Andreas has one: Vesna Bogdanovic, who leads their head-to-head 10-6 across 16 meetings and has clearly studied the tape. Somewhere right now, Andreas is preparing for the next one.
Style, Habits, and the 4 AM Problem
- Comeback artist: after dropping material he still wins more than 81% of his games, and his win rate after losing a piece stays above 50%.
- Endgame machine: nearly three of every four games reach an endgame, and his average win runs a marathon 75 moves.
- Hard to steamroll: only about 2% of his games end as one-sided losses, and he essentially never resigns early.
- The queen does the talking: almost 4,000 queen checks, his favorite checking piece by a wide margin, and he lands the first check 53% of the time.
- Circadian menace: his best hour is 4 AM, with a 67% win rate. By 6 AM it drops to 0%, proving even a tilt-proof grinder has a bedtime.
- Saturday is his best day at 56% wins, Sunday his worst at 49%, meaning chess is his weekend religion, just practiced on the wrong day.
- Undefeated in Rapid: one game, one win, a perfect 100% career record, and the wisdom to never risk it again.
- Owner of 16 career stalemates, because occasionally even the flag agrees to a draw.
Legacy
Andreas Tryggestad makes bullet chess look like a lifestyle sport: endless volume, a dinosaur in the opening, a queen that checks on sight, and peak form while the rest of the world sleeps. Whether he is out-grinding you for 75 moves or calmly letting your clock do the losing, one thing is certain: time is never your friend when Andreastrygg22 is on the other side of the board.