Dex Webster (chessweb101): National Master, Bullet Machine, Serial Comeback Artist
Dex Webster, known to opponents and bruiser-to-be rivals as chessweb101, is a National Master whose online chess career began in February 2015 at the standard starting rating of 1200. From those first nervous blitz clicks, Dex has built one of the more entertaining resumes on the site: a peak blitz rating of 2678, a bullet peak of 2787, and a game count that would make most keyboards file a grievance. Over eleven years Dex has played more than 20,000 rated games, losing thousands of them and apparently enjoying every minute.
The Long Climb
The trajectory is textbook persistence. Dex crossed 2000 blitz in March 2016, broke 2300 in mid-2018, cracked 2400 during the 2020 chess boom, and kept grinding upward into the 2600s by 2025 and beyond. There were dips along the way, including a rough stretch in late 2023, but the overall arc points firmly uphill. The full journey is best seen in one glance:
For the record book, the blitz peak sits at 2678 (2026-01-30), achieved in January 2026, while bullet climbed all the way to 2787. Not bad for someone who opened their account in 2015 by winning exactly four games and losing none, then immediately got humbled like everyone else.
Style: The Alapin grind
Dex is a creatures-of-habit player with a heavy Sicilian habit. As White, the weapon of choice is the Sicilian Defense via the Alapin Variation, a line Dex has played over 800 blitz games with a healthy win rate north of 53 percent. The White arsenal also features the flexible King's Indian Attack and the gloriously named Colle Rhamphorhynchus Variation, which sounds less like an opening and more like a pterodactyl with a plan.
With Black, expect the Modern Defense, plenty of hypermodern sidesteps, and the occasional full send with the Amar Gambit, which Dex has played nearly a thousand times in bullet despite a losing record. Loyalty to a bad idea is its own kind of brilliance.
The deeper pattern is endgame warfare. Roughly 80 percent of Dex's games reach an endgame, wins average nearly 75 moves, and the comeback rate sits above 83 percent. Dex almost never resigns early, which explains how a 93-game losing streak could coexist with a 22-game winning streak in the same career. There is no quit in this player, only more moves.
Rivalries and One Very Familiar Face
No biography of chessweb101 is complete without josemojardin, the most played opponent in Dex's database at 90 games. The score? A staggering 83 wins, 4 losses, and 3 draws. Somewhere out there, josemojardin keeps queuing up anyway, which is either loyalty or a hostage situation only they understand.
Other regular dance partners include firewoods, imbrianfellows, and derpythechicken, who hold far more balanced records, plus leobispo83 and gyg, who hold winning records over Dex and presumably frame those game links at home.
Quirks, Habits, and Hazard Warnings
- Best hour to face Dex is never: noon, where the win rate hits 60 percent. Early mornings are another story entirely, with win rates dipping below 40 percent around 9 and 10 am.
- The tilt factor measures a spicy 93 out of 100, meaning one bad loss is often followed by five more, each played with full confidence.
- The queen is the favorite checking piece by a landslide, deployed over 21,000 times across recorded games.
- In slower daily chess, Dex has dabbled in the Ruy Lopez and even the Scandinavian Defense with strong results.
- Despite all the checkmate threats flying around, Dex wins most games the honest way: long, grinding, exhausting squeezes that opponents resign somewhere around move 80.
Verdict
Dex Webster is the kind of National Master every online pool needs: relentlessly active, allergic to resigning, dangerous in the Alapin, and capable of turning a lost position into a two-hour nightmare. Queue up a game at your own risk, and whatever you do, avoid scheduling anything at 9 am. Dex might be running on fumes, but the endgame technique is awake.