Richard Natividad: The Man, The Myth, The DaGreat
Some players earn their usernames. Others simply assert them with the confidence of a man who opens 1.d4 and dares you to argue. Richard Natividad, known to the chess world as RichardDaGreat, has been grinding out blitz games since 2010, and by now the sheer volume deserves its own zip code: over 8,600 blitz wins, more than 8,200 losses, and enough queen checks to make a battery factory nervous.
A Journey From 1300 to the Summit
Richard's story is one of slow-burn excellence. Starting in August 2010 with a modest blitz rating, he quietly put in the work. By 2014 he had leapt into the 2200s, and the climb never really stopped. In July 2025 he touched a peak blitz rating of 2613, a number that would make most club players consider a career change. His bullet play was historically dangerous too, peaking near 2600 back in 2011, when he apparently played faster than his own fingers could object.
That said, the road was not smooth. Richard's longest losing streak stretches 19 games, which he presumably survived the way all great players do: by immediately queueing another game. His longest winning streak of 22 games suggests that when he gets hot, he is very difficult to stop.
The Opening Repertoire of a Contrarian
Richard is not your mainline worker. His most-played weapon is the Alekhine Defense, deployed over 2,000 times in blitz alone, often reaching the Alekhine Defense: Modern Variation. He happily mixes in the Budapest Gambit, the Australian Defense, the Nimzo-Larsen Attack, and a Bogo-Indian setup that boasts a healthy 56% win rate. He is, in short, the kind of player who makes opening theory authors sigh audibly.
His favorite response as White? 1.d4, over 3,000 times, with the occasional 1.b3 flourish just to keep the databases guessing.
Rivalries of Legend
No biography of RichardDaGreat is complete without his nemesis list. His most-played opponent is Mark Kotliar, against whom Richard holds a winning record across 234 battles. He also has a friendly blood feud with DatsFunny, who has taken 91 games off him, a scoreline Richard surely describes as "still counting." Meanwhile HumbleSpaceMan has endured 182 encounters, most of them exhausting.
Style and Habits
Richard's games are long, grinding affairs: his wins average nearly 80 moves, and his endgame frequency sits north of 86%. He fights. Over 83% of his games feature comebacks from worse positions, and even after dropping a piece he wins nearly half the time, which says either "resilient" or "dangerously optimistic." His preferred hunting hours are early morning, with a best-time-of-day peak around 6:00 AM, when his opponents are apparently still rubbing sleep from their eyes.
A few fun facts about the DaGreat one:
- Plays best on Saturdays, worst on Wednesdays, for reasons science cannot yet explain.
- Checks with the queen more often than any other piece, because subtlety is for other people.
- Wins 51% as White and 46% as Black, proving the first-move advantage is real and Richard knows it.
- Currently riding a five-game winning streak, so challenge him at your own peril.
Legacy
Fifteen years, thousands of games, and one extremely confident username later, Richard Natividad stands as proof that greatness is not declared, it is ground out one blitz game at a time. Long may the d-pawn march.