Chess.com's secret player, part 4
Hi again, it's aronian22. Today, I did the impossible. I solved the biggest mystery of my blog: the identity of @Beijing2017. In the last three parts of this series, we looked at their games, and determined that they are one of chess.com's best untitled players.
But what if I told you they were a titled player? And that they were actually one of china's top players?
Right there is where I began my investigation, in the one piece of evidence that we had: their flag. Whoever owns the account either lives in China or did at some point, and has an email associated with it. And with the style of play that they had, they were probably in china's top 50 players.
So I pulled up FIDE's list of the top chinese players. Many of them had ratings in the 2300s, so I could rule out everyone but the top 30.
Then, I made a quick database of the games of @Beijing2017 and checked out the openings they played. It appeared they played mainly d4, but also played some e4 openings. They also seemed to play the french as black quite a bit.
This made it very easy. All I had to do was check which players didn't have a chess.com account, and find out what openings they played. And boom, I had a near perfect match.
But before I reveal the truth, I have something to say. Nobody has yet submitted the solution to my puzzle in the previous post! Time is running out, so submit your answer in the comments, for a chance to choose the theme of my next article! Here's the puzzle again:
White to play and win.
Ok, one final thing before I say who it is. Whether I'm right or not, please don't bother @Beijing2017 about this. Don't message them about it or anything. You can post things in the forums and I don't think they'll care, but don't message them personally.
Ok, here it is.....
@Beijing2017 is Zhou Weiqi.
For most of you who don't know who this is, Zhou Weiqi is China's #17 player. They are relatively inactive nowadays, but not inactive enough to be removed from the ratings list.
Here's a picture of them:
Zhou played in many tournaments for a while but stopped playing in 2017. Hence the name Beijing2017. Which also happens to be where they live.
So the mystery is solved, and hopefully, we won't have to do this series anymore. Goodbye everyone!