Jermov

Who Is Jermov?

Jermov is an online chess grinder with a simple business model: absorb the pressure, trade nothing, win on move 80. A Blitz specialist with a profitable Bullet side business, Jermov has logged more than 8,500 rated games, most of them long, most of them tense, and a startling number of them won while an opponent's clock quietly bled out. Call it the Jermov method: let them attack, let them overextend, let them lose.

A Career in Three Acts

Act one opened in March 2014 with a debut in the low 1300s and 160 games inside the first month. By May 2014 the rating already sat above 2180. Then, like any sensible chess hermit, Jermov vanished, surfacing briefly in April 2019 to nudge past 2400 before shutting the door again.

Act two was the great grind. August 2020 contained 919 blitz games. May 2021 somehow held 1,028, roughly 33 a day, every day, weekends and meals included. September 2021 brought a crossing of 2700, six games, and another three and a half years of silence.

Act three is the comeback nobody scheduled: back online in February 2025 around 2690, through 2800 by November, and up to a peak blitz rating of 2869 (2025-12-07) on December 7, 2025. Two days later came a bullet peak of 2819 (2025-12-09). As of early 2026, Jermov remains camped near 2700 in both speeds, still grinding, still refusing to trade.

Playing Style: The Marathon Man

The numbers describe a pure endgame grinder. Roughly 80% of games reach an endgame, the average win stretches 79 moves, the average loss still takes 78, and the first capture typically waits until move 7. Blood is spilled only after the paperwork is filed.

• Comeback rate: 90%. Even after dropping a piece, Jermov still wins about half the time.
• One-sided losses: barely 1%. Flattening this player is statistically difficult.
• Tilt factor: 9 out of 100. Glacial composure.
• Terminations: 1,274 wins by timeout versus 654 by checkmate. The clock is the real attacking piece.
• The king has personally delivered 40 checks. Nobody knows why. Nobody dares ask.

Opening Repertoire: Respectable Spine, Suspicious Edges

As White, 1.e4 is a lifestyle. Opponents who defend with the Caro-Kann Defense have donated nearly 380 blitz games at about a 60% clip, the Sicilian Defense: Moscow Variation pays out near 59%, and there is a long-running Four Knights, Spanish Variation habit on the side. As Black, the pillars are Queen's Gambit Declined structures with 3...Bb4 (293 games) and the closed Ruy Lopez (197 games), both solid, both honest, both a shade under 50%, because grinding is a religion and not a guarantee.

Then there is the Blackburne Shilling Gambit, played as Black well over a hundred times despite a losing score, on the theory that trapping a queen on move 4 never gets old. Exhibit A:

The one genuine fear: opponents who open with the Amazon Attack, Siberian line, hold Jermov to 44%. Everyone has a monster under the bed.

The 6 AM Weapon and the Bullet Confession

Jermov's win rate by hour looks like a stock chart with one magnificent spike: 69% at 6 AM, the single best hour on file, before a long slide through the mid-40s around breakfast. Monday is the best day at 53%, Sunday the worst at 48%. The routine writes itself: lose some sleep, win dramatically at dawn, nap, repeat.

Bullet, meanwhile, appeared from nowhere in December 2025 and immediately peaked at 2819 within 580 games. Bullet Jermov has no respect for classical theory: 1...f6 in reply to 1.e4 scores 58% as Black, the Amar Gambit gets out-weirded at 59%, and opponents who defend with the Caro-Kann in bullet drop three games in four. It should not work. It works.

Rivals and Old Friends

• tocka_18: 44 meetings, 27 wins, 15 losses. The favorite sparring partner.
• Alan Stein: 41 meetings, 15 wins, 23 losses. The nemesis. Some rivalries are written in the stars, badly.
• Daniel Taboas Rodriguez: 28 meetings, 8 wins, 18 losses. The statistician clearly controls the statistics.
• species8473: 29 meetings, 18 wins, 10 losses. A perfectly respectable acquaintance.
• FunMaxi: 40 meetings, 22 wins, 17 losses. A true seesaw series.

Rapid Chess: A Brief Accident

Rapid exists mostly as an accident: 14 career games, an 11-2-1 record, and a peak rapid rating of 1760 (2021-09-12), a number that would embarrass the same player in the other formats. The early rapid games were all wins; the 2023 experiment included a stretch that ended at 1259, which is not discussed at family dinners. One draw came in the Colle [REDACTED] Rhamphorhynchus Variation, a Colle System variant apparently named after a pterosaur and classified by the database for reasons unknown. There is also a documented rapid win with the Dresden Opening: The Goblin. The man contains multitudes.

Jermov by the Numbers

• Blitz ledger: 3,742 wins, 3,262 losses, 498 draws across 7,502 games.
• Longest winning streak: 13. Longest losing streak: a humble 9.
• Most common checking piece: the queen, with 8,247 checks, just ahead of the rook's 8,021.
• 47 career stalemates and 363 endings the database politely files as unknown.
• 53% scoring as White, 48% as Black, 62% against lower-rated opposition and 28% against stronger players, which is refreshingly honest.
• Roughly 21 percentage points better in casual games than rated ones. Rated pressure is real, even for a grinder.
• When Jermov checks first, the win rate climbs to nearly 59%. The initiative, apparently, functions.

The complete blueprint: survive the opening, touch nothing before move 7, march to an endgame, and win while the opponent's clock does the mating. If you see Jermov queued at 6 in the morning, consider yourself warned.