Thuc Nguyen: The Bullet Chess Marathoner
Some people drink coffee to wake up. Thuc Nguyen (known on the board as hayanhonvic) simply plays bullet chess at five in the morning, apparently because that is when his win rate peaks. With thousands of bullet games under his belt, Thuc has turned speed chess into a lifestyle, and the data suggests he is very much awake while doing it.
His opening repertoire reads like a wildlife documentary. As Black, he happily reaches for the Modern Defense: Pterodactyl Variation, a name that sounds like it should be chasing lawyers in Jurassic Park, along with the gloriously offbeat Australian Defense. As White, he opens with 1.d4 so consistently that opponents could probably set their watches by it.
Playing Style: Queen First, Questions Later
If you face Thuc, expect to be checked. A lot. His most common checking piece is the queen, deployed like a door-to-door salesperson who will not take no for an answer. He also lands the first check more often than not, and when he does, his win rate jumps to around 61 percent.
Thuc's games tend to go long: his wins average around 64 moves, which tells you he is perfectly content grinding out an endgame while the clock ticks down. Notably, a huge share of his victories come by timeout, meaning plenty of opponents have simply run out of minutes while Thuc calmly shuffled rooks around. His comeback rate of over 83 percent shows that even losing a piece rarely fazes him.
Rivalries andnemesis Files
Every chess player has a nemesis, and Thuc appears to have at least two. kpremkumar and lh61 have each beaten him four times without reply, a combined 0-for-8 record that surely keeps Thuc up at night, presumably plotting revenge between bullet games. On the brighter side, makh9med has been swept aside 4-0, proving that Thuc can dish out a shutout as well as receive one.
yannick32 and mercurysquad have both learned that Thuc fights back, going down 3-1 in their head-to-head meetings.
Achievements
- Peak blitz rating of 1428, reached in June 2025
- Peak bullet rating of 1348
- Longest winning streak of 9 games
- Over 4,000 bullet games played, with more wins than losses
- A 57.65 percent win rate in the QGD with 3.Nc3 Bb4, his most reliable weapon
- Best performance hour: 5:00 AM, because apparently sleep is optional
Rating Journey
Thuc's rating graph looks less like a mountain and more like a heart rate monitor during a particularly exciting movie, swinging between 900 and 1340 across his bullet career. The trend, however, is unmistakably upward.
Peak bullet rating: 1348 (2025-03-21)
The Verdict
Thuc Nguyen is proof that you do not need flashy gambits to be dangerous. You need a reliable 1.d4, a pterodactyl on call, a queen with an agenda, and the patience to let your opponent's clock do the dirty work. Play him at your own risk, and maybe not at 5 AM, when he is at his sharpest.