FAUSTO CASTELLA GARCIA (YEIKO2017): The Blitz Warrior
Meet the FIDE Master
Fausto Castella Garcia, known online as YEIKO2017, is a FIDE Master with a true passion for fast chess. His preferred time control is blitz, and he has spent thousands of games proving that online speed chess is a serious craft. At his peak he reached 2616 (2024-08-29) in blitz, a rating that commands respect in any digital arena.
The Road to the Top
YEIKO2017 entered the online rating pool in August 2020 with a single blitz loss at 1885. Instead of vanishing after one bad result, he turned that defeat into a launchpad. By early 2021 he crossed 2300, and by 2022 he was regularly battling above 2400. The big breakthrough came in August 2024, when he touched 2616 in blitz. He also flashed serious speed in bullet, peaking at 2676 in 2023.
Opening Repertoire
Fausto is a 1.e4 player at heart. He has faced the French Defense more than 400 times and still scores above 50 percent, while the Ruy Lopez Morphy Defense Anderssen Variation has become one of his most profitable weapons. As Black, he is a lifelong student of the Sicilian Defense, especially the Dragon Variation and the Yugoslav Attack, where he has navigated hundreds of sharp, tactical battles.
Rivalries and Rematches
Every online warrior has a dance partner. For YEIKO2017, that partner is matwe2, who has faced him 30 times in blitz. Fausto holds a narrow 16-14 edge in a rivalry that could go either way. He has also traded dozens of intense games with patzer-reloaded, mr_garvey, and harald_blatand, proving that he values familiar battles over easy matchups.
Grinder Mentality
The numbers describe a stubborn competitor. Fausto has played more than 8,700 blitz games, winning 3,828 of them. He once won 11 games in a row, then hit a 19-game losing streak, and still bounced back with a comeback rate above 90 percent. He wins 68.35 percent of games against lower-rated opponents and still manages 28.99 percent against higher-rated ones.
His style is aggressive, with the queen as his most common checking piece. He reaches the endgame often, averages more than 66 moves in wins, and wins 42.81 percent of the time even after losing a piece. Perhaps the most telling stat is his favorite time to play: 1 a.m. While the rest of the world sleeps, YEIKO2017 is calculating, checking, and grinding out the endgame.