Antonio Santoro (Cavallopazzo10): The Mad Horse of Blitz Chess
Antonio Santoro, better known on the online chess boards as Cavallopazzo10, rides under a handle that translates from Italian as "crazy horse", and it is less a nickname than a warning label. Since first logging on in May 2018, the Mad Horse has played more than 22,000 rated games, the overwhelming majority of them blitz and bullet, grinding out a career win rate right around the fifty percent line while climbing from a 1508 debut to a peak of 2375 (2026-03-18) in March 2026.
He is not a gambler, a theorist, or a Romantic. He is a workhorse: relentless volume, familiar positions, and an opponent's clock treated like a personal enemy.
The Scandinavian Defense Machine
If chess openings were a buffet, Cavallopazzo10 would walk straight past all of it to the Scandinavian Defense. More than 5,000 of his blitz and bullet games feature it, making the Scandinavian less an opening for him and more of a personality trait. As Black he meets 1.e4 with 1...d5 and grabs the queen; as White he answers 1...d5 with 2.exd5 and dares you to prove it is dubious. When he wants to feel sophisticated he switches to the Caro-Kann Defense, his most profitable reliable weapon at a 54 percent blitz win rate. The rest of the stable includes the Alekhine, Modern, French, Czech, and even the occasional 1...f6 Barnes Defense delivered with a perfectly straight face. As White, 1.e4 is near-mandatory, with the King's Gambit trotted out against 1...e5.
A typical evening with the Mad Horse looks something like this:
Queen out early, king still at home, plan unclear, vibes immaculate.
Nemeses, Victims, and the 11shawn Marathon
No blitz grinder is complete without a dossier of familiar faces, and Antonio's rolodex is thick. His most frequent dance partner is 11shawn, against whom he has played an astonishing 101 games, holding a 53-40-8 edge. chesslik has been far more generous, conceding 44 wins against only 21, and Sevad donates at a 23-8 clip. Then come the nemeses: Claudio Paduano has beaten him 35 times out of 50, Dragon84 owns a 32-13 series lead, and Follemente Scacchisti, whose name means "mad chess players" in Italian, lives up to it with a 28-12 edge. Misa Markovic splits 60 games nearly down the middle. The Mad Horse keeps coming back either way. That is what horses do.
Playing Style: Grind First, Flag Later
Antonio's games are marathons wearing sprint shoes. The average decisive game runs 75 to 80 moves, roughly 80 percent of his battles reach an endgame, and his comeback rate sits near 90 percent, so a lost-looking position against him is often just the opening act. Even after dropping a piece he wins close to half of his games, which says a lot about his resourcefulness and possibly something worrying about everyone else's technique.
Habits worth knowing before you queue up:
- He is a morning player: the 9 a.m. hour is his most productive at nearly 54 percent, while the 6 a.m. slot is a horror show. Espresso timing matters.
- His tilt factor is a placid 12: a 12-game losing streak has never spooked him, and his longest winning run of 13 games always answers the bucking.
- Flagging is a two-way street: more than 4,000 wins on time, and, in the interest of full honesty, more than 4,400 losses on time as well.
- He does not enjoy suffering: lost positions get resigned early rather than stretched into torture sessions.
- His first capture usually lands around move five or six, and 150 of his games have ended in stalemate, which is 150 more than most of us.
- His favorite way of saying hello is a queen check, with over 21,000 delivered over the years.
The Gallop Through Time
The journey has been a proper endurance ride. Antonio debuted in May 2018 around 1508 and spent that first summer yo-yoing through the 1600s and 1700s. He brushed past 2000 in November 2019, crossed the line again with a thousand-game month in April 2020, and reached the 2130s by August 2021. Then came 2022, the year the horse basically stayed in the stable, followed by a patient return and a furious 2024 to 2026 campaign featuring thousands of games and a career-best blitz peak of 2375 (2026-03-18) on March 18, 2026. Over on the bullet board the numbers climb even higher, peaking at 2494 in December 2025, while rapid remains a rarely visited paddock at 29 lifetime games.
The Final Furlong
Whether it is the Scandinavian for the five-thousandth time, a King's Gambit tossed out like a dare, or another 80-move blitz grind that ends with someone's flag falling, Cavallopazzo10 plays online chess the way a mad horse runs: straight ahead, at speed, with total commitment. Queue him at your own risk, and maybe not before his morning coffee.