Aleksandr Usov IM

Meet the Dolphin

International Master Aleksandr Usov, known to opponents worldwide as Dolphin_2010, is a FIDE-titled player who has chosen the fastest, most unforgiving habitat in online chess as his home: bullet chess. True to his username, he seems to sleep with only half his brain at a time, because his best win rate arrives at 3 o'clock in the morning, when most of the pool is asleep and he is still hunting.

From 1025 to the Stratosphere

Every legend has an origin story, and Usov's begins in December 2018 with a single bullet game: one game, one loss, 1025 rating points of raw potential. Most people would log off and rethink their hobbies. Instead, he played 108 bullet games the very next month, won 83 of them, and never looked back. He crossed 3000 in September 2024, and by September 2026 he touched a peak of 3438, a number that lives in the clouds where only the world's elite bullet players breathe. In 2026 he routinely logged 200 to 300 bullet games per month, which is less a hobby and more a cardiovascular event.

An Opening Repertoire with a Sense of Humor

Usov's repertoire is a delightful mix of textbook solidity and controlled chaos.

• Caro-Kann Defense: his defensive backbone, played in nearly 400 bullet games with a winning record to match.
• Amar Gambit: an opening so objectively rude it begins with 1.Nh3. He has played it 317 times in bullet and wins roughly two out of every three, proof that in bullet, surprise beats theory every single time.
• London System: his Poisoned Pawn treatment wins over 77% of his bullet games, which is less an opening and more a magic trick.
• Offbeat weapons: the Amazon Attack: Siberian Attack (377 games, 71% wins) and the Australian Defense (311 games, 72% wins) keep opponents out of book within three moves.

Rivalries of the Deep

With thousands of games logged, some faces keep surfacing:

• Aman Hambleton: his most frequent sparring partner at 143 meetings, with Usov dominating 116 to 22.
• Amir Mohammad Hamidi: 129 games, and another heavily one-sided affair in the dolphin's favor.
• bf4 and Shelev Oberoi: combined records of 65-5 and 73-11. Ruthless.
• Andy Woodward: a genuine nemesis, holding a losing head-to-head record against Usov.
• Daniel Naroditsky: 78 encounters, and the dolphin keeps coming up short against the super-GM streamer, which is what happens when your opponent diagnoses your mistakes out loud in real time.

Style: Relentless, Resilient, Slightly Nocturnal

• A comeback rate above 85%: down a piece, he still wins nearly two-thirds of those games.
• An early resignation rate of just over 3%, meaning opponents must actually finish him off.
• A longest winning streak of 45 consecutive games, a tidal wave few have survived.
• Long, grinding battles: his decisive games routinely stretch past 90 moves, with endgames appearing in the vast majority of them.
• Remarkably tilt-resistant, with his favorite way to harass the enemy king being a good old-fashioned rook lift and check.
• The one beaching spot in his ocean is daily chess, the only format where opponents get days to think and the dolphin apparently forgets to surface.

Final Word

An International Master title from FIDE, a bullet rating among the online elite, and an opening book that includes 1.Nh3 played hundreds of times on purpose: Aleksandr Usov is proof that you can be deadly serious about chess without ever taking it too seriously. If you find yourself paired against Dolphin_2010 at 3 AM, good luck. The dolphin is awake.