Fermin DePas: The Man Behind Lucena10
The 1+0 Marathoner
Fermin DePas, better known to the internet as Lucena10, does not play chess casually. He plays chess the way other people breathe: constantly and without asking permission. With more than 91,000 rated games logged since 2015, he has spent a literal chunk of his life parked in the bullet queue. The clock is not his enemy, it is his dance partner.
His preferred time control is bullet, and he has played around 82,000 of those 1+0 sprints.
tells the story of a player who climbed, crashed, tilted, recovered, and then did it all over again, like a financial market run by a feral cat.A Repertoire of Beautiful Stubbornness
When Fermin has the white pieces, the bishop goes to f4 almost before you can say "development." He is a devoted d4 player who frequently lands in East Indian Defense territory and loves to kick off a Benoni Defense just to see what happens. On the black side, the Caro-Kann Defense is his comfort blanket, appearing in more than 11,500 bullet games. The Amazon Attack and Australian Defense also show up with alarming frequency, proving he is not afraid of openings that sound like rejected video game bosses.
shows a player with real survival instincts. He wins by timeout more than twice as often as by resignation, and his comeback rate sits near 82 percent. Translation: never assume the game is over just because his queen is hanging.Rivalries, Streaks, and the Grind
Every legend needs a foil. For Fermin, that foil is iyi-iyi, the opponent he has faced 325 times and beaten in 208 of them. If that is a rivalry, it is the kind where one side brings popcorn. He also battled furadefesa 150 times, turning those encounters into a personal workshop for whatever weird opening he was testing at 3 AM.
His longest winning streak reached 21 games, which is impressive. His longest losing streak hit 49 games, which is either a crash of epic proportions or evidence of unmatched commitment to the queue. Probably both.
Peak Hours and Peak Fermin
Fermin's best time of day to play is 6:00 AM, when normal people are asleep and the chess.com servers are apparently still recovering from the night shift. His peak bullet rating reached 2184 (2022-09-13), and he pushed blitz to 2110 (2022-09-07), numbers that put him in the very respectable online club. For anyone who wants to study his style,
gives a taste of the disciplined, slightly menacing setup he loves.Strip away the opening databases and timeout wins, and you are left with a simple truth: Lucena10 plays chess because he genuinely cannot stop. And honestly, respect.