Rafael Antonio Mendoza Vega: The Tiger Who Hunts at 2 AM
International Master Rafael Antonio Mendoza Vega answers to Tigre2020 online, and the username comes with a behavior manual. Real tigers are nocturnal ambush predators, and so is this one: his win rate peaks in the small hours of the morning, with the 2 AM slot hitting roughly 85% wins. His preferred habitat is bullet chess, a format where most players lose on time and Rafael, apparently, just gets warmed up.
A Bullet Habit Beyond All Reason
Some players dabble in bullet. Rafael moved in, furnished the place, and invited several thousand opponents over. His bullet rating began at 980 in August 2020 and crossed 2,200 within a single month, and the volume since then has been frankly alarming:
- 11,255 bullet wins against 2,068 losses, about five wins for every defeat, which in predator terms is a very efficient buffet.
- A 44-game winning streak at a time control where most people forget which color they are playing.
- 621 bullet games in January 2023 alone, and nearly 5,000 games across 2022. Sleep was presumably optional.
- 2429 (2022-01-29) on the bullet ladder and 2677 (2026-03-25) in blitz, picked up along the way like shed fur on the furniture.
The Sicilian Sharpshooter
Every tiger has a favorite prey, and Rafael's is the Sicilian Defense: an 88.6% bullet win rate over 456 games, with the Najdorf Variation version even nastier at 87.6%. Prey that dodges the Sicilian finds the rest of the menu is not much safer:
- Scotch Game as White: 88.65%, efficient and rude.
- A Queen's Gambit line where Black develops the bishop early: 135 wins, 1 loss, and 141 games of opponents apparently never reading the scouting report.
- The Caro-Kann Defense as White: 222 games at 81.5%, because even solid walls get pounced.
- The Amar Gambit and the Australian Defense, because a tiger also enjoys eating things with unfamiliar names.
Regulars, Rivals, and One Porcupine
A predator this active develops a social circle, mostly consisting of people he has beaten. Henrik Dalsgaard has faced him 306 times and keeps coming back, trailing 221-69-16 in a rivalry that must feel like a gym membership. echecmat7 is 63-1 against him, and somewhere in the archives one very carefully framed loss exists. tjaturtw has donated 92 wins to the cause. And then there is Khvicha Supatashvili, who leads their series 43-9-10: the porcupine in the tiger's diet, because every great hunter has one animal that fights back.
Style: The Rubber Tiger
Most players, having just dropped a piece, begin composing their resignation speech. Rafael wins 77% of the games where he loses material first, and his early resignation rate sits under 2%, suggesting the concept of surrender is simply not installed. He reaches the endgame in two-thirds of his games, takes his first pawn around move six, and delivers checks with the queen 10,835 times and counting, because subtlety is for longer time controls. His tilt factor reads a serene 8: the tiger does not rage, the tiger reloads.
Final Word
The arc of the story is simple. A 999-rated cub logged into the blitz pool in 2017, tumbled over his own paws, and then spent the following years eating his way up the food chain until FIDE handed over the International Master title, which is the official way of confirming what bullet regulars already suspected. The tiger is real, it is awake at 2 AM, and it is coming for your clock.