Michael Lin: The MultiMlin Story
Michael Lin, known on the board as MultiMlin, is a chess player who treats the game the way a chef treats a spice rack: more is more. He arrived in August 2017 as a Rapid player rated 692 who promptly lost his first game, then spent the next nine years climbing to master strength in every time control he could get his mouse on. Some players specialise. Michael collects formats like trading cards, and he has made himself at home in all of them.
His preferred battlefield is Rapid, which is the sensible choice for someone whose ideas need a moment to unfold. That has not stopped him from logging thousands of faster games, and his rating graph in Rapid tells a clean story of steady, stubborn improvement.
A Very French Affair
If you want to know Michael, learn the French Defense. It is his signature, his comfort food, and occasionally his doom. He has played the French hundreds of times across formats, including a long, affectionate relationship with the Advance Variation, where he scores better than his overall average and clearly enjoys the space squeeze that follows. When the position gets locked and both sides start shuffling, Michael is the one humming.
He also has a well documented taste for the strange and the sharp. The Bird Opening in the form of the Dutch Variation with an early Batavo Gambit has appeared in hundreds of his games, which is the kind of statistic that makes a chess database blink twice. Add the Scandinavian, the Caro-Kann, the Amar Gambit, and the occasional Barnes Defense, and you have a player who would rather test you with a weird idea than play the twenty-fifth most popular line in the book.
The Gambit Habit
Michael's opening choices read like a dare. Give him pawns, tempo, and a little chaos and he is happy. A few habits worth knowing:
- A French Defense loyalist who is not afraid to suffer a slightly worse position if it means the structure is familiar.
- A Batavo Gambit enthusiast, a line most players meet once and then pray never to see again.
- A Scandinavian and Caro-Kann regular, proving he can attack from either chair.
- An Amar Gambit devotee in fast games, because why be solid when you could be interesting?
- A collector of slightly odd openings like the Barnes Defense, played with genuine enthusiasm and mixed results.
Rivalries and Regulars
Every club player has a dance partner, and Michael's most frequent opponent is gambitsforchess. Over 420 games together, Michael has built a lopsided record that suggests one side of that rivalry is enjoying it more than the other. There is also rowanssl, a fixture of nearly a hundred games, plus a rotating cast of regulars who clearly know exactly which gambit is coming and still cannot always stop it.
He leads the head to head against most of his familiar rivals, which is either proof of improvement or proof that he plays the same people until he learns their habits. Probably both.
Style of Play
Michael's games tend to last. His average decisive game runs around 65 to 70 moves, a sign of a player who does not mind grinding instead of blitzing out a tactic. Nearly seven in ten of his games reach an endgame, and his comeback rate is remarkable: he rescues a huge share of positions where he has lost material. This is not a player who resigns early. He is a player who makes you prove it.
His record also reveals a practical streak. He has won over two thousand games on time, a number that will make purists clutch their scoresheets, and he rarely gives up entirely, with one-sided losses making up only a sliver of his results. His longest winning streak reached sixteen games, and he has clearly learned to ride momentum.
Perhaps the most Michael fact of all: his best results come around noon, when his win rate nudges past sixty percent. Schedule accordingly, or at least bring coffee.
Fun Facts
- Started at 692 in Rapid and built a career that spans more than twelve thousand games.
- His fastest peak, reached in bullet in August 2025, is 2372 (2025-08-09), which is a lot of rating for a lot of mouse clicking.
- Most common checking piece across his analysed games: the queen. By a mile. The queen is doing a lot of unpaid labour in this repertoire.
- White and black results are almost perfectly balanced, which is rarer than it sounds and slightly suspicious in a fun way.
- His Rapid peak sits at 2324 (2025-02-10), a number that lines up neatly with a decade of stubborn, gambit-flavoured work.
What to Expect
Play Michael Lin and you should expect a French Defense or something deeply unusual, usually both. Expect the game to go long, expect to be checked by a queen at some point, and expect him to fight on in a lost position until the last practical trick has been tried. Bring your opening knowledge, bring your patience, and whatever you do, do not assume the Batavo Gambit is a mistake.