Konstantin Egorov (Vaporwaffle94): The Night Owl Candidate Master
Meet Konstantin Egorov
Konstantin Egorov, known on the board as Vaporwaffle94, is a FIDE Candidate Master whose chess journey reads like a speedrun with a turbo button. He started his online blitz life in December 2018 at a modest 1667 rating and spent years grinding in the anonymous pools of the internet. Then everything clicked. By November 2024 he had reached a peak blitz rating of 2481 (2024-11-05), transforming himself into a titled player with a reputation for marathon battles and midnight magic.
The Blitz Ascent
Egorov's preferred time control is unapologetically blitz. He plays it like a riptide: relentless, chaotic, and impossible to ignore. His rating graph looks like a hockey stick that discovered coffee. After a long plateau around 1700, he broke through in 2022, crossed 2000 in late 2023, and then detonated in the second half of 2024, at one point playing more than 200 blitz games in a single month.
His longest winning streak hit 11 games, which is impressive. His longest losing streak hit 14, which is also impressive, but in a different way. Egorov is nothing if not resilient. He bounces back from losses at a comeback rate near 82 percent, and he almost never resigns early. The man will defend a pawn-down endgame like it is his birthright.
Opening Repertoire
As White, Egorov is a pragmatic d4 player with a soft spot for fianchetto experiments. He has collected strong results in the Four Knights Game and the English Opening, and he is particularly dangerous against the Caro-Kann Defense, winning two thirds of his white games in that line.
As Black, he is a French patriot. The French Defense in all its moods, from the Classical Svenonius Variation to the Exchange and Advance lines, is a regular guest in his games. His record in the Svenonius is almost perfectly balanced, a testament to a player who would rather fight for a win than settle for a draw. He is happy to steer the game into structures like this:
One warning: the Döry Defense has not been kind to him. A score south of 20 percent there suggests he would rather face almost anything else.
Familiar Foes
Every online warrior has rivals, and Egorov is no exception. His most frequent opponents read like a who's who of blitz bruisers:
- imaslesa: Egorov owns this rivalry, winning four of five encounters.
- Vlad Vlad: Revenge is real, as this opponent beat Egorov four times.
- Rus159SP and Sergei Iskusnyh: Both hold perfect records against him, the chess equivalent of kryptonite.
You can almost hear Egorov sighing when those usernames appear in the pairings.
The Night Owl
Egorov's analytics paint a beautiful portrait of a creature of the night. His best time of day to play is 2:00 AM, when his win rate reportedly hits 100 percent, and Sunday is his strongest day of the week. Past midnight, with the rest of the world asleep, Vaporwaffle94 apparently becomes a different, more dangerous animal.
His games run long, averaging over 70 moves, and he makes opponents work for every half point. He is the kind of player who checks with rooks more than any other piece, over a thousand times, because why be subtle when you can be loud. Against weaker opponents he converts at nearly a 73 percent clip. Against stronger ones, he still scratches out wins a quarter of the time. The tilt factor is real, but so are the comebacks. That is the essence of Konstantin Egorov: a Candidate Master who will lose 14 in a row, then rip off 11 straight and remind everyone why they should never count him out.