Wei Xuan Timothy Chan: FIDE Master of Bullet and Blitz Chess
Wei Xuan Timothy Chan, known on the boards as fm24601, is a FIDE Master who treats speed chess less like a game and more like a cardio regimen. His preferred time control is blitz, but the raw numbers tell an even louder story about bullet chess: more than 4,300 rated bullet games, a peak rating of 2846 (2024-10-18), and an average win that stretches past 75 moves, which in bullet terms is basically an ultra-marathon with a clock ticking down to zero.
FM 24601: A Username With a Prison Record
Fans of Les Misérables will recognise 24601 as Jean Valjean's prison number, which would make fm24601 the most literarily ambitious handle in the bullet pool. Whether the number is a deliberate homage or a very committed pun on his FIDE Master title, the parallel holds: where Valjean stole a loaf of bread, Chan steals tempi, and unlike Valjean he keeps voluntarily returning to the scene of the crime, one 1.e4 at a time.
Opening Repertoire: 1.e4, the Italian Game, and Friends
Chan opens with 1.e4 with the reliability of a heartbeat: in 2024 alone he played it 952 times, with an occasional 1.e3 and a single lonely 1.d4 existing mostly for deniability. As White, his best scoring weapons are the Italian Game: Two Knights Defense (a 60.8% win rate in bullet) and the Italian Game: Scotch Gambit, Anderssen Attack, while the Caro-Kann Defense is the most frequent visitor to his board, with over 200 bullet meetings and a healthy 53% score against it.
With the black pieces he has logged serious mileage in the Döry Defense (173 bullet games, right at 50%), the Four Knights Game, and the Queen's Indian Defense: Classical Variation, Tiviakov Defense, plus a brave habit of defending his beloved Two Knights from the other side. Here is the line that keeps showing up:
Blitz Chess: The Preferred Time Control
Blitz is his listed favourite, and his blitz peak of 2775 (2020-04-07) arrived back in April 2020, when the whole planet was stuck indoors and the online servers were smoking. These days the blitz account functions more like a tasting menu between bullet feasts: only a few hundred rated blitz games, played in focused bursts rather than marathons.
The Nemesis Files
Every grinder has a wall, and for Chan the wall is thatsallshewrote: 64 head-to-head games scored at 20 wins, 40 losses and 4 draws, a rivalry so lopsided that the username starts to read like commentary on the scoresheet. Manu David is somehow worse, a 5-31-2 abyss he keeps revisiting like a moth to a flamethrower. For balance there is toyota_land_cruiser, an almost perfectly even 22-24-4 endurance contest, proving that some Land Cruisers simply refuse to be overtaken.
Playing Style: Marathon Legs, Titanium Resolve
Chan's statistical profile reads like an endurance athlete's medical chart. His endgame frequency sits at 83.5%, his wins average 75.6 moves and his losses average even longer, he makes his first capture around move 7, and his most trusted checking piece is the queen, with 4,923 royal door-knocks on record. He resigns early in just 1.2% of his games, a number suggesting the resignation button may not actually be installed on his device.
And when things go wrong, they get fixed: his comeback rate is a staggering 90.8%, his tilt factor is a zen-like 12, and a 12-game losing streak was eventually answered by a 10-game winning streak and a charge to that bullet peak in October 2024. Draws, for the record, are rare currency in his games; something must be won.
Fast Facts Before You Click Challenge
- Title: FIDE Master, the only title that comes with a lifetime supply of two extra letters.
- Signature move: 1.e4, played over 660 times in 2018, over 950 times in 2024, and counting.
- Best hour of the day: midnight, where his win rate climbs above 53%. Worst hour: 6 AM, so if you want a fair fight, set an alarm.
- White scores 47.8% for him, black 43.3%: an equal-opportunity grinder.
- Vanished from the boards in 2021 and 2022, then resurfaced in 2023 faster, sharper, and still playing 1.e4.
- Longest winning streak: 10 games. Longest losing streak: 12. The rollercoaster has no inverse loop, only loops.