Meet the Kulinarist
Andrey Kalinichev is an online chef who answers to the handle “Kulinarist,” and if his results are any clue, the full course is rarely served. The FIDE Master favorite kitchen was built on 1.d4 and a high-performing, low patience, amply salted appetite for 5-minute chess. His main course seems to be blitz: nearly 601 wins against only 31 losses in the logged blitz sample, with occasional ingredients from bullet added as a spice.
Do not let the relaxed handle fool you. Kulinarist compiles a closed kitchen, where visitors cook with the menu he decides, not theirs.
Blitz Kitchen
If 1 minute is a snack, 3 minutes is entree at the house of Kulinar. “The preferred time control appears to be blitz,” says the data, and his peak 2747 (2014-08-25) is listed. The overall drive upward by the season, starting in 2012 and reaching the highest early in 2015, looked like the dotted line of a healthy pressure cooker.
His longest winning streak across all formats reads atomic: 71 games. That is not so much a chunk as a wholesale sentence followed by opponents.
Signature openings
Kulinarist is not a plain water/ salads type player. He has repeatedly paired the Sicilian Defense with a restless atmosphere, and when he walks to the white side, he is very much in favor of the Nimzo-Larsen Attack and Amazon Attack touches.
His opening data is constantly rich and slightly absurd: even in the so-called Amazon Attack, he still pushed a win rate above 70 percent in bullet and above 90 percent in blitz. If there is a serving for 2024, the opponent simply gets the listed side dish: “Another day, another sauce.”
Bitter rivalties
No player sits on the menu as often as Rogelio Jr Antonio. The 902 games against the Kulinarist is the strongest sign of an old rivalry, and he took the majority, 506 wins, which is not, honestly, nothing. Although Rogelio Jr Antonio is the battlefield regular, the chef still remembers that he earned the title as a FIDE Master for a reason: combine 4 kr with few, some noble attempts, and always this slightly mocking almost 71-game winning streaks.