Catrihino Pestano: The cickings Time-Trouble Artist
A Bullet Heart in a Blitz World
Catrihino Pestano, known to the internet as cickings, is a chess omnivore who has played more than forty thousand rated battles. The profile says bullet is the preferred time control, and the lightning fast games are clearly close to the cickings heart, even if blitz is where the rating tower reached its highest peak. Catrihino once climbed to 2777 (2025-08-29) in blitz, touched 2474 (2017-05-01) in bullet, and posted a rapid peak of 2597 (2021-01-28). The longest winning streak stretched to 19 games, which in online chess feels like a small immortality.
Opening Repertoire: All Roads Lead to Complication
If you sit across from cickings, expect a fight in the Sicilian Defense or a cozy war in the Caro-Kann Defense. The statistics show an enormous appetite for the Czech Defense, the Amar Gambit, and the ever dangerous London System Poisoned Pawn Variation. The Caro-Kann Defense is particularly kind in daily games, where cickings owns a 94 percent win rate with it as Black.
Rivalries That Define a Career
Every online warrior needs rivals, and cickings has a full rogues gallery. The most frequent visitor is Mihai Ionescu, who faced cickings 61 times and lost the series 33 to 24 with 4 draws. Then there is ImbaSpirit with 60 meetings and Sudhanshu Ranjan with 59. Not all rivalries are friendly. Michael Baron leads the head to head with 36 wins against 17, a name that probably makes cickings reach for the rematch button a little more carefully.
The Style and the Madness
Catrihino plays like someone who read the clock first and the board second. The games reach the endgame in 83 percent of cases, wins arrive in almost 71 moves on average, and early resignations happen only about one percent of the time. The comeback rate is 87 percent, which means being down a piece is merely a plot twist. cickings wins slightly more often with the white pieces, 54.95 percent, and the best hour to catch this player is 6 in the morning, when the coffee is strong and the opponents are sleepy.
- Longest winning streak: 19 games
- Comeback rate: 87 percent
- Endgame frequency: 83 percent
- Favorite day to win: Saturday
- Most common checking piece: the queen
Why It Works
Part of the magic is simple volume. With thousands of games in bullet and blitz, cickings has seen almost every trick. cickings checks first in 51.7 percent of games and converts those with a 59.1 percent win rate. Against lower rated opponents, cickings scores nearly 64 percent, while against higher rated players, cickings still finds a way to steal about 32 percent. The tilt factor sits at 17, which for a player with this many games is basically inner peace.