Zirva Safarov: A Chess Life in Blitz and Bullet
Zirva Safarov, known on the board as zirva_safarov, is a marathon runner disguised as a blitz player. Since December 2016, Zirva has played over 9,500 rated games, building a career out of rapid-fire decisions, stubborn defenses, and the occasional 5am brilliancy. The preferred time control is bullet, but the heart clearly belongs to blitz.
Career Arc
Zirva's first recorded month is a statement: start at 1557, finish at 2127. From there the climb continued through 2017 with thousands of blitz games, reaching the 2300s, then the 2400s in 2020, and entering the 2600 club in 2022. By June 2026, Zirva touched a blitz peak of 2700 (2026-06-26). Bullet peak 2371 (2018-04-25) and rapid peak 2603 (2024-01-04) round out the resume.
The path was never a straight line. There are dips that would break mortals, including a 2407 blitz rating at the end of 2023, followed by a furious return to 2600 in 2024. Zirva simply does not stay down.
Style and Openings
Zirva's opening repertoire is unapologetically individual. With the white pieces, the Bird Opening is a comfort zone, especially the Dutch Variation, Batavo Gambit, which appears in nearly a thousand blitz games. With black, the French Defense is the security blanket: Exchange, Advance, Winawer, MacCutcheon, Guimard, and more.
The games are not quickies. Zirva reaches the endgame about 84% of the time, and wins average nearly 83 moves. Opponents should pack a lunch. As white, Zirva wins at a 47.59% clip, while as black the rate is 41.06%, showing a clear preference for first move privileges.
A typical Bird setup from Zirva's world might look like this:
Favorite Battlegrounds
- French Defense: Exchange Variation, over 740 blitz games.
- French Defense: Winawer, Advance Variation, a black-office staple.
- Budapest Gambit with 3...Ng4 4.e3, nearly 440 games as black.
- Blackburne Shilling Gambit, 460 games and counting.
- Caro-Kann Defense and Czech Defense make regular appearances too.
Rivalries
No chess marathon is complete without familiar faces. Zirva's most frequent opponent is phonySallly, with 26 meetings and a nearly even split that is heavy on draws. Against hikmet-lenkoran, Zirva has a dominant 15 wins against 3 losses. But Mihai-Lucian Grunberg has been a persistent thorn, taking 14 wins in 18 games. Every hero needs a villain.
Mind Games
Zirva is dangerous when behind. The comeback rate is an absurd 91.42%, and after losing a piece Zirva still manages to win 43.19% of the time. The flip side is a tilt factor of 11, with an 11-game losing streak on record, but also a 10-game winning streak. It is chaos with a chess clock.
Best time to face Zirva? Probably not at 05:00, the peak hour, and probably not on Wednesday or Friday. Also avoid rated rematches if possible, because Zirva is 35.76 percentage points better in casual games than rated ones, which is just rude.