Vincenzo Palladino: The Blitz Grinder Known as enzoex
Vincenzo Palladino, better known on the board as enzoex, is a blitz specialist with a story that reads like a slow burn thriller. He first appeared on the rating lists in February 2018 as a raw beginner sitting at 857, and by October 2026 he had climbed all the way to a peak of 2487. That is a gain of more than 1600 points, earned the hard way, one frantic three-minute game at a time.
Blitz is clearly his home. While he has dabbled in rapid, bullet and even a couple of daily games, the vast majority of his nearly 8,000 blitz battles tell the real story of his development.
The Long Climb
For years enzoex hovered in the low four figures, occasionally flirting with 1500 but never quite breaking through. Then came July 2024, the month everything clicked. He entered at 1716 and finished with a 1980 peak, then kept pushing past 2100 in August. From there the curve turned steep and relentless, passing 2200 in 2025 and finally touching 2487 (2026-10-02) territory in October 2026.
The volume behind that curve is staggering. January 2026 alone saw 882 blitz games, and October 2026 added another 904. This is not a player who waits for inspiration. This is a player who queues up again.
An Opening Repertoire Built on the Sicilian
As White, enzoex almost always opens with 1.e4, and the Sicilian Defense is the terrain he knows best. The Alapin Variation is his most trusted weapon, appearing in hundreds of games, while the French Defense has quietly been one of his most profitable guests, with a win rate above 54 percent.
With the black pieces he is happiest in the Dutch Defense, which he has played more than 200 times in blitz, and he also leans on the Caro-Kann Defense and the Accelerated Dragon. But scroll a little deeper and you find the fun stuff: the Barnes Defense, the Czech Defense and the occasional Blackburne Shilling Gambit. enzoex is not above a bit of mischief in the opening.
Style: Checks, Long Games and Late Escapes
His games are not short. Wins and losses both average around 77 moves, and his average game length sits near 80. He checks constantly, with rooks and queens doing most of the shouting, and he is remarkably dangerous after losing material, winning nearly half of those positions. A comeback rate north of 84 percent suggests a player who simply refuses to resign. His early resignation rate is barely above 1 percent, which tells you everything about his fighting spirit.
He also knows how to win on the clock, with over a thousand timeouts in his favour. The romance of checkmate is nice, but a flag is a flag.
Rivals and Regulars
Every blitz addict has a nemesis, and enzoex has a few. He holds a healthy 7-4 edge over antiego, and a tidy 7-1 record against samucb2011. But bacyanide has been a genuine headache at 1-5-1, and alex_krayz has also had the better of things at 2-5-2. The longest-running rivalry belongs to lightlegacy, a tight 3-5-4 series that neither side seems able to settle.
Against stronger opposition his win rate drops to around 27 percent, which is the one crack in the armour. Against everyone else he is a relentless favourite.
Off the Clock
If you want to catch enzoex at his best, set an alarm. His results in the small hours are absurd, including a perfect record in the 5 a.m. hour and a 70 percent win rate around 7 a.m. His longest winning streak reached 16 games, and his longest losing streak stopped at 10, which for a player with this kind of volume is impressively disciplined.
Vincenzo Palladino is not a prodigy. He is something more relatable: a grinder who turned up thousands of times, learned every wrinkle of the Sicilian, and built a 2400-plus blitz rating out of sheer stubbornness.