Alex Pedchenko Bondar (pechenn9): FIDE Candidate Master
Alex Pedchenko Bondar, known on the chess server as pechenn9, is a FIDE Candidate Master whose online archive stretches across roughly 16,000 analyzed games and more than a decade of stubborn, steady improvement. The username sounds suspiciously like something fresh out of the oven, and the chess matches the vibe: patient, warm, and best served early in the morning.
The peaks tell the story of a three-format player. Bullet reached 2701 (2026-01-21) in January 2026, blitz hit 2621 (2025-11-07) in November 2025, and rapid, the preferred time control, topped out at 2240 (2026-02-14) in February 2026. Underneath all of it sits one identity: an endgame grinder who treats resignation as a rumor.
The Climb: 985 Games of Homework
The record opens in May 2013 with a rapid rating near 1330 and 985 games crammed into the first year, which is less "learning chess" and more "being thrown into the ocean to figure out swimming." It worked anyway. In October 2014 the rapid rating rocketed from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s in a single month, blitz crossed 2000 by the end of 2017, and the march continued through a 2021 leap into the 2300s and the big 2025 to 2026 push, when blitz cracked 2600 and bullet joined the 2700 club. At some point along the way, FIDE made it official with the Candidate Master title.
Rapid: The Home Turf
Rapid is where the bulk of the work lives: 10,900-plus games, 5,410 wins, and a rating curve with more plot twists than a soap opera. After years away from the format, Alex returned in July 2025 and immediately went 24-3, climbing from 1851 back past 2100, then pushed on to a fresh peak in 2026. The comeback was not a fluke; it was a schedule.
The Repertoire: Traps, Patience, and the Occasional 1.f3
With the black pieces in rapid, the Philidor Defense is the foundation: nearly a thousand games of structure-first, pawn-chain chess. The side dish is pure mischief: the Blackburne Shilling Gambit, played more than 500 times from the black side. Anyone who grabs the e5 pawn against it meets the classic trap below.
As White, the menu turns eclectic: 735 games of Sicilian Defense, nearly as many with the Barnes Opening: Walkerling (yes, 1.f3, played 727 times at a winning score, which is either psychological warfare or performance art), plus the English Opening: Carls-Bremen System and a healthy serving of the French Defense.
Blitz specialties rotate: the Scandinavian Defense leads in volume, the London System with a Poisoned Pawn flavor scores 55% over 242 games, and the Hungarian Opening: Wiedenhagen-Beta Gambit wins about 62% of the time. In bullet, an entry filed under Australian Defense produces a 76% score, which presumably involves a boomerang.
Rivals: One Nemesis, One Solved Problem
Every grinder has a ghost. For Alex, the ghost is Николай Гриценко: 29 games, 1 win, 24 losses, 4 draws, a rivalry that functions as a subscription service to humility. The rematches keep getting scheduled anyway, which says something admirable about resilience. On the brighter side of the ledger sits ritbhav, held at bay 12-6-1 across 19 meetings, proof that sparring partners can be solved with enough repetitions.
Then there is mauricio_kfc at 6-3-2, one of several recurring names that suggest a social player: someone who keeps returning to the same tables, win or lose, snacks presumably included.
Style: The 78-Move Handshake
The statistical fingerprint is unmistakable. Nearly four games in five reach an endgame, wins average a marathon 78 moves, and the early resignation rate sits at 1.41%, meaning an early tap-out happens about once every 70 games. Lose a piece against Alex and the win rate still hovers near 47%, with comebacks as the default outcome rather than the exception. Fully one-sided losses occur just 2.58% of the time, so opponents rarely get to coast.
There is also a schedule. The best hour is 6 a.m., where the win rate touches 59%. At 5 a.m. it collapses to 25%, the difference between coffee and pre-coffee. Casual games outperform rated ones by about 20 percentage points, and the tilt factor reads a placid 13, the number of someone who has stared down a lost position and refused to blink many, many times.
One last quirk: the favorite checking piece is the rook, delivered more than 15,000 times, comfortably ahead of every other piece. Alex likes checks from across the board, the long-distance kind, handed over with the same patience the first 70 moves already displayed.
Quick Facts
- FIDE title: Candidate Master (CM)
- Longest winning streak: 18 games. Longest losing streak: a mercifully shorter 13.
- Career checks delivered: 43,880. Checks received: 43,726. Balance so perfect it deserves a frame.
- Daily chess record: 0-9, including a January 2020 stretch of eight straight losses at a rating of exactly 800. Some formats are simply not for everyone.
- White wins 52.66% of games, black 46.44%. The first move matters, even when the first move is 1.f3.