Eltaj Safarli: Grandmaster of the Long Game
Eltaj Safarli is a FIDE-titled Grandmaster who competes under the username Eltaj_Safarli, and his chess is best described as patient to the point of philosophical. His wins average more than 80 moves, endgame positions appear in over 82 percent of his games, and only a tiny fraction of his losses are ever one-sided. Beating Eltaj Safarli is not an event, it is a full shift of work.
Rapid Chess: The Preferred Battlefield
Rapid is his format of choice, with a record of 143 wins, 42 losses, and a stadium-filling 97 draws, because solid Grandmaster chess produces solid Grandmaster results. His rapid rating famously sat frozen at 2676 for what felt like an era, wobbled during a rough 2020 patch, then clawed its way back above 2700, which is fitting since clawing back is literally what he does.
Blitz and Bullet: Peak Online Chess
Patience aside, the speed formats are where the scoreboard gets scary. His peak blitz rating is 3111 (2020-04-04), his peak bullet rating is 3085 (2020-12-28), and his longest winning streak reached 25 straight games. In December 2020 alone he played 126 bullet games, won 88 of them, and briefly lived at 3085. Across blitz and bullet his all-time tally features more than 1,300 wins against roughly 660 losses.
Opening Repertoire: e4 First, Grind Second
Eltaj opens with 1.e4 the way other people open doors. With White he leans on Closed Sicilian Defense structures and the trusty Four Knights Game, where his bullet win rate tops 70 percent. With Black, the Scandinavian Defense carries the workload in bullet. The lone weakness: the Berlin Defense, against which his rapid score sits at a grim 12.5 percent. Everyone has a wall they cannot climb.
Rivalries and Records
- Hikaru Nakamura: 81 games, with a record of 22 wins, 51 losses, and 8 draws. Choosing the toughest possible sparring partner shows either great ambition or great nerve.
- karyakin: 33 wins against 13 losses, one of the few rivalries he clearly owns.
- Daniel Naroditsky: 36 games, split perfectly at 12 wins, 12 losses, and 12 draws. A rivalry so balanced it deserves a mathematics paper.
- Josefine Safarli: 62 games with a 38-16-8 score. The Safarli household clearly does not play friendly games, it plays for keeps.
- Shakhriyar Mamedyarov: 75 games of hard-fought rivalry.
The Daily Chess Mystery
Every great biography needs a plot twist, and here it is: in daily chess, Eltaj's record is 0 wins and 2 losses, with a rating that peaked at 399. Yes, the same man with a 3111 blitz peak lost his only two daily games at a level most beginners would politely call a starting point. Somewhere out there, a correspondence player is feeling very good about themselves.
Quick Facts About Eltaj Safarli
- Longest winning streak: 25 games. Longest losing streak: only 9.
- Comeback rate: 91.8 percent, and he still wins 57.9 percent of games even after dropping a piece.
- Tilt factor: 9, which in human terms means remarkably chill.
- Do not challenge him at noon, when his win rate hits 74 percent. If you must play him, try 3 AM, when it collapses to 27 percent.
- He has delivered checkmate exactly once in nearly 2,600 games. Everyone else resigned first and saved him the paperwork.
- Queen checks: 2,697. Rook checks: 2,690. Even his checking pieces are in a photo finish.
- White win rate: 62.8 percent. Black win rate: 53 percent. Tuesday and Sunday are his best days.
- Early resignation rate: 43 percent. When the position is lost, he knows, and he lets everyone go home early.