The Man Behind the Username
Aleksandr Moiseenko, better known to online chess fans as severomorskij, is a FIDE Grandmaster who has built a reputation as one of the most relentless bullet chess players on the platform. Since bursting onto the scene in late 2014, he has combined a Grandmaster's technique with an arcade racer's willingness to press the clock.
An Unorthodox Opening Repertoire
If you want to understand severomorskij, look at his opening choices. As White, his signature weapon is the Siberian Attack, a sharp and rarely traveled line he has played hundreds of times. He also happily ventures intothe Nimzo-Larsen Attack when he wants to steer the game away from theory. As Black, he leans on the Sicilian Defense and its many offshoots, mixing main lines with practical surprises like the Amar Gambit.
This is not a player who memorizes 30 moves and hopes for a draw. He enjoys unbalanced positions, loves to reach the endgame, and plays with a pawn-to-piece ratio that suggests he is always cooking something.
Bullet Is His Natural Habitat
While his blitz credentials are impressive, severomorskij truly comes alive when the clock is almost irrelevant.
His bullet rating climbed steadily from a modest start to a peak above 3000, and the chart tells the story of a player who simply refused to stop improving.His bullet ledger shows more than 540 wins, and he once assembled a 28 game winning streak and an 86 percent comeback rate. Drop a piece against him? He still wins nearly half the time. He checks early and often, favors the queen as his checking piece of choice, and tends to be the first player to deliver checks in almost 59 percent of his games.
Rivals and Midnight Oil
Every great online career has rivalries. His marquee feud is with Aleksandar Indjic, a 65 game saga that has tested both players. He also has a habit of challenging the legendary Hikaru Nakamura, even though those meetings have mostly gone to hikaru. That willingness to face stronger opponents is exactly why his longest losing streak of 11 games never became his identity.
Perhaps the most dangerous moment to face him is at 5am, when his win rate spikes and the rest of the chess world is too sleepy to defend against another Siberian Attack.