OldVolgaPoet: Bard of the 86-Move Epic
Some players write haiku. OldVolgaPoet writes sagas. This is an endgame-loving blitz chess grinder with more than 1,600 rated games, an average game length of roughly 86 moves, and a personal peak of 2671 (2026-07-26). The board, like the river in the name, is treated as something wide, deep, and in absolutely no hurry to reach the sea.
The ledger reads 713 wins, 763 losses and 146 draws, but the ledger misses the point: nearly every game was a full-length novel, usually with a long closing chapter and a twist ending.
The arc of one very busy stretch of 2026, climbing from the 1600s to the 2600s:
The Signature Verse: The Amazon Attack
The opening notebook is not subtle. Among recorded first moves, d4 appears 806 times, d3 three times, and e4 exactly once, which was presumably an accident. Then on move two the queen marches to d3: the Amazon Attack, OldVolgaPoet's signature poem, essayed 423 times for a 48.7% score. There is even a beloved sub-stanza, the Siberian Attack, good for 119 more games. It is the chess equivalent of opening a poetry reading with an accordion: unexpected, divisive, and somehow it keeps working.
Black Side Verses
With the black pieces the theme is endurance rather than elegance. The Czech Defense anchors the repertoire with 265 games, the Philidor Defense contributes 155 more, and the Modern fills in the margins. White scores 47.3% overall while black manages 40.6%, so it is fair to say the poetry flows more freely with the first move in hand.
Style Notes: The Long Game
- Endgame frequency: 81.3%. Four games in five reach a proper endgame, and the poet is entirely at home there.
- The first capture usually waits until move 7 or 8. Setup, setup, setup, then the plot begins.
- Average win: 82.5 moves. Average loss: 84.7 moves. Even the defeats get an extended coda.
- Early resignation rate: 0%. Not "rarely", not "almost never". Zero. The poem ends when the position does.
- Comeback rate: 91.3%, with a 43.2% win rate even after dropping a piece. The second act always arrives.
- Tilt factor: 9 out of 100. Glacial.
- Longest winning streak: 9. Longest losing streak: 9. The symmetry is almost too on-theme.
- Finishers: 202 wins on time, 411 by resignation, 100 by checkmate, plus 11 draws by stalemate, because every epic deserves a swan song.
Dedication Pages
Velin Belev is the muse: six meetings, four wins, two draws, zero losses. Johnny Cortes is the critic: nine meetings, the most played rival on record, and a grim 3-5-1 score that has clearly inspired several revisions. coryives earns a kinder footnote: five games, two draws, and, knowing this poet, several very long conversations.
Muse Hours
The muse clocks in at noon: a 62.5% win rate in the 12:00 hour, the best slot on the schedule. By 15:00 she has left the building entirely, where the win rate collapses to 16.7%. Tuesdays hum along at 50% while Sundays slouch to 38.8%. Against stronger opposition the score dips to 27.9%; against weaker fields it soars to 75.4%, which suggests the poet prefers a sympathetic audience.
Footnotes and Marginalia
- The entire bullet career consists of one game and one loss. Sprint poetry is not the discipline here.
- Checks delivered: 5,354 against 4,925 received. The poet asks questions slightly more often than they answer them.
- When a line needs underlining, it is done with a rook: 1,996 rook checks, far and away the favorite checking piece.
- Rated games outperform casual ones by about 44 percentage points. Romance, apparently, is reserved for rated play.