Roberto Costantini: The FIDE Master Who Thinks Different
Roberto Costantini, known across the online chess world as thinkdifferent, is a FIDE Master who has clearly taken his username as a strategic directive. While most titled players memorize mountains of theory, Roberto opens with 1.b3, defends with pterodactyls, and has quietly stacked up more than 6,800 wins across bullet and blitz, peaking at 2577 (2026-01-14) in bullet chess and 2769 (2026-08-29) in blitz.
The Long Game: A Fifteen-Year Climb
Roberto first appeared around 2010 as a solid club-level blitz player and spent years quietly sharpening his game. The breakout came in 2017, when he started playing bullet chess by the hundreds of games per month, including 467 in a single September. From there the climb never really stopped: his longest winning streak reached 15 games, and by the mid-2020s he was trading blows with some of the strongest blitz and bullet players online. The full arc is on display below.
An Opening Repertoire from Another Planet
Roberto's opening database reads like cryptozoology. His calling card is the Nimzo-Larsen Attack, the cheeky flank move 1.b3 that he has played in nearly 2,000 games across time controls. As Black, his signature weapon is the Modern Defense: Pterodactyl Variation, a dragon-shaped nightmare that wins almost 59% of his blitz games. The Amar Gambit, the Barnes Defense, and even the Australian Defense make regular appearances, usually to the visible confusion of his opponents. Behold the first move of an empire:
For the statistically curious, his results by opening are charted here:
Rivalries, Feuds, and Familiar Faces
Grinding thousands of games means meeting the same opponents over and over. elseres has faced Roberto 58 times and ended up on the wrong side of 41 of those meetings. Andreas Rupprecht has absorbed 33 losses in 48 games. And then there is Vladimir Raicevic, the eternal nemesis: 39 games split nearly down the middle at 19 wins to 18, a rivalry that remains technically unresolved and probably always will be.
Playing Style: The Comeback Machine
Roberto is an endgame-first fighter. Roughly 80% of his games reach an endgame, and his typical win takes about 72 moves of patient suffocation. His early resignation rate is under half a percent, which means surrender is simply not in his software: he still wins half of the games in which he drops a piece, and he fights back from lost positions more often than nearly anyone. Statistically he is most dangerous around 11 PM, when his win rate climbs above 60%, so if he challenges you at midnight, it may be wise to sleep on it.
Roberto Costantini by the Numbers
- An undefeated daily chess record: 30 wins, zero losses, and one diplomatic draw.
- A flawless 5 for 5 with the Sicilian Defense in daily games.
- More than 3,000 bullet wins, most of them delivered with a b3 and a smile.
- All six of his stalemates ended in draws, because of course they did.
- Best playing hour: 23:00. Worst: 7 AM, proving he is human after all.
Bottom line: Roberto Costantini is living proof that a FIDE Master title and a repertoire of openings nobody prepares for can coexist beautifully. Think different, play different.