The Man Behind Vel55
Игорь, better known on the board as Vel55, is a blitz devotee with a famously heavy mouse. Between early 2020 and early 2022, he played more than 19,000 rated blitz games, enough to make even the most dedicated bullet enthusiast blink. If you see him in the lobby at 2 a.m., know that he is exactly where he wants to be.
His rating graph is a mountain range:
. He touched 2596 (2021-08-08) in August 2021, thanks to a marathon month that combined volume with fire. For a player with that much volume, his results are honestly a coin flip, with a strength-adjusted blitz win rate of about 49.6%.1.d4 and Nothing Else
Vel55 is a creature of habit. As White he opened with 1.d4 in more than 9,000 recorded games and only tried 1.e4 a few hundred times. That commitment shows in his opening repertoire: he regularly steers into the Nimzo-Indian Defense, the Gruenfeld Defense, and the Slav Defense, and he is happy to outlast opponents in long positional struggles. His average winning game lasts about 78 moves, which is either patience or an inability to convert quickly.
As Black, his favorite dance partner is the Sicilian Defense, especially the Najdorf. He has played the Sicilian in well over 1,000 games, and while his win rate there is only about 41%, he never stops trying. He also has a soft spot for the Benoni and the Dory Defense, making him a tricky opponent who is rarely booked out.
His opening tendencies are captured nicely in
, which shows that his best results come in sharp, double-edged lines. He gets punished in the Closed Sicilian more often than he would like, but he keeps coming back.Rivalries, Streaks, and Survival
Every blitz grinder needs a foil, and Vel55 found his in cruz29. The two have played 83 games, with Vel55 holding a narrow edge of 41 wins to 33 losses. Another frequent foe, Ofer Zemer Tov, has crossed swords with him more than 50 times, and Vel55 has the better of that series too.
He is no stranger to pain. His longest losing streak is 16 games, but his longest winning streak is 12. His comeback rate sits near 88%, and he wins 42.7% of games even after losing a piece, which means the game is not over until he says it is. If you want to beat him, you have to actually finish him, since he only got checkmated 250 times in his sample but resigned over 8,500 times. He would rather run out the clock or resign than watch someone deliver mate.
His most dangerous weapon may be the clock: he won more than 2,100 games by timeout and lost only 698 that way. He also tends to win more when he gets the first check, and his queen is by far his favorite checking piece, with over 12,800 checks delivered.
The Vel55 Experience
Playing Vel55 means accepting chaos with a heavy dose of 1.d4. He is a grinder, a comeback artist, and a man who will happily play until 2 a.m. because that is apparently when his internal chess clock is sharpest. His record is not flawless, but his stubbornness is. If you face him, bring a good endgame and a lot of time.