Semyon Puzyrevsky: The FIDE Master Who Grinds After Midnight
Semyon Puzyrevsky, known across the online chess world as puz2010, is a FIDE Master and certified blitz marathon runner. The username is a tidy portmanteau of his surname and, apparently, his year of manufacture, which explains a lot: he showed up in mid-2016 as a very young player with ratings still learning to walk, and then simply never stopped playing. Nearly a decade later he is a titled master with a peak blitz rating of 3137 (2026-03-10), a peak bullet rating of 3073 (2025-10-19), and thousands of games worth of evidence that persistence is a chess skill too.
Opponents describe his play as relentless. His clock describes it as bullying.
The Ten-Year Grind
Some players improve in leaps. Semyon improved in geological epochs. Every year since 2016 the number next to his name inched upward: the 1500s fell, then the 1800s, then the 2000s, and eventually the 3000s arrived. The full ascent is preserved in his blitz rating history, which looks less like a chart and more like a staircase he carved himself. Even his rapid account got the treatment, peaking at 2400 (2026-03-15) along the way.
The volume is the real headline. He owns a 20-game winning streak, once absorbed a 14-game losing streak and clearly took it personally, and in November 2025 alone he played 755 blitz games, roughly 25 per day, every day, for a month. Well over 7,000 blitz games and counting. Sleep was presumably scheduled between moves.
Opening Repertoire: Caro-Kann Devotion and Gambit Crimes
Semyon's repertoire is a delightful mess anchored by one great love: the Caro-Kann Defense, his most-played opening across blitz, rapid and bullet. The twist is extremely on-brand: he scores better with the Caro-Kann as Black than he does against it as White. Nothing says devotion like playing an opening hundreds of times while still finding it annoying when someone else does.
- The Elephant Gambit, played roughly 300 times in blitz at a near-even score, a result that should be submitted to a mathematics journal.
- The Amar Gambit (1.Nh3), deployed hundreds of times in bullet with a winning record. Somewhere, his first coach is pretending to be busy.
- The Amazon Attack, ridden to an 81% score in rapid as White, proving that confidence is a legal opening principle.
- The Scotch Game and the Czech Defense, for opponents who deserve a normal game.
- The Barnes Defense in bullet, because bullet chess has no rules.
A slice of the Caro-Kann Exchange, the gift that keeps on giving:
Style: Endgames, Comebacks and the Refusal to Resign
Lose a piece to Semyon and do not celebrate. He wins nearly half of his games even after dropping material, and his comeback rate sits north of 80%. Early resignation appears in only about 3% of his results, so games against him end when he says they end, usually sixty-plus moves deep in an endgame where your clock is very, very nervous.
More than three quarters of his games reach an endgame, his average win runs about 77 moves, and his tilt level is so low that statisticians checked the equipment twice. He is also the rare player whose most common checking piece is the rook, and who delivers checkmate in under 1% of his games, because by the time mate is required the opponent has either tipped the king or run out of time.
Rivalries: 71 Games with metallicat-rus and One Framed Victory
Every grinder has a dance card. Semyon's most frequent sparring partner is metallicat-rus, whom he has faced 71 times and beaten 54 of them. Against georgra the ledger reads 34 wins to 7 losses. His nemesis is Oleksandr Bortnyk, against whom the score is five wins, twenty-nine losses and two draws, a rivalry best described as unfinished business.
And then there is Hikaru Nakamura. Twenty-eight games. One win. Twenty-six losses. One draw. Somewhere in Semyon's home there is a framed screenshot of that single victory, and it has absolutely earned the frame.
Semyon Puzyrevsky: Fast Facts
- Title: FIDE Master (FM)
- Username: puz2010, efficiency itself
- Preferred time control: blitz, with bullet a close second and daily chess as a laboratory, where he once went 14 for 14 with the Schnepper Gambit
- Night owl rating: elite. His win rate after 10 PM clears 70%, peaks around 1 AM, and only dips below 40% near 5 AM. Schedule accordingly
- Rated games bring out his politeness: he plays roughly 17 percentage points better when nothing is at stake, like the rest of us
- Trademarks: winning lost positions, rook checks, long endgames, and never, ever resigning
Give Semyon Puzyrevsky a board, a clock and preferably the hours after midnight, and he will outlast you, outgrind you, and then queue up again before you have finished feeling bad. Breakfast is at noon.