Who is Joseph Reid?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been noticing the name Joseph Reid (@JosephReidNZ) showing up on the Puzzle Rush Survival leaderboards — looks like he’s from New Zealand and has been putting up some seriously impressive runs!

Does anyone know more about him? He seems to fly a bit under the radar despite those crazy high scores. I’m curious about his background, how he got so good at Survival mode, and if he’s involved in other parts of the chess world like streaming, coaching, or content.

Would love to hear anything others might know — always enjoy learning about unique and dedicated players in the community!

Cheers,

Melissa😊

I've seen them around the chess.com forums, but admittingly haven't seen them anywhere else. If I recall, they chose to specialize in puzzles and puzzle rush survival. They claim to have the world record for puzzle rush survival, but don't really play many chess games.

There's some people who choose to specialize in puzzles like this, but it's really pretty different from playing a real game. In a real game, you don't always know a single solution exists, so puzzles at this level can be more memorization and brute force calculation if you are willing to sit there long enough and keep thinking; in a real game, you'd of course flag (lose on time).

That's a fair observation — puzzles and over-the-board or rapid games definitely test different skill sets. From what I understand, @JosephReidNZ has made a name for themselves in the puzzle and Puzzle Rush Survival scene, and yeah, they've claimed (and even shown) some extremely high streaks in Survival mode. It seems like their focus is really on deep calculation, pattern recognition, and precision rather than general gameplay strategy or time management.

You're right that in real games, you don’t have the luxury of knowing there is a forced line — which makes puzzle-solving a more "clean" environment in some ways, especially at high levels where it becomes more about endurance, accuracy, and sometimes sheer brute-force analysis. It's a different kind of discipline, not necessarily better or worse, just specialized.

Still, it's impressive to see someone push a niche to that extent. Not many people have the patience or skill to sit through 500+ puzzles without a mistake!

Agreed. For non-puzzle specialists, I'd say most people can't even cross 30 in puzzle rush survival. 40+ is pretty high and 50+ is super good! Titled players and really high rated players tend to have records at 60+. Perhaps more titled players could get to 60+ or 70+, but they probably just don't want to sit through puzzle rush for that long; they may rather play timed puzzle rush. Then there's titled players like GM @Hikaru getting over 100! Anything higher is almost certainly a specialist (which is still impressive, of course).

Edit: I thought I saw @Hikaru higher than their listed record of 60? Maybe it was GM @GMBenjaminBok I was confusing in my mind; they are more in the realm of puzzles specialist though.

Hi,

If you click on his profile he has videos on what he does and even blogs etc , maybe check them out and see how Joseph is so good and how he spends alot of time .

Yeah, I guess. As you say there are only one CORRECT result so vs. in game it could be more easily memorised then game play.

OK thank you I will do

Joseph is actually kinda grinding chess.com. As well as puzzles, he has 144 awards, making it one of the highest in the game.

... and every book and passport (somehow)

The books and passports are much easier to collect though; it's just time-consuming. You get each "book" just by playing those openings (win, loss, or draw) and you can also play a bot with this opening too; it counts.

As for passports, you can play a chess.com friend who changes their flag in their settings and each time you play them, it should count as that country "passport." It's also not too difficult to collect a lot of passports through the random pairing of live chess; you could probably just play a lot of chess and maybe have a friend help you with the few countries you don't have yet. It's not really worth my time (not to mention not much personal interest in it), but it's possible if someone REALLY wanted these achievements (for those who want the passports without changing settings; there's also forum threads where players seek out people from specific countries to help them collect the passports more efficiently).

He has a history of using alt accounts to boost his rating to look better than he actually is, so I don't see why he wouldn't cheat in puzzle rush survival to do the same thing, especially considering there aren't really any consequences for cheating in puzzle rush survival (the leaderboard is filled with cheaters). Additionally he has never shown his tactical skills in any other format, as doesn't really play any other rated games despite his boosting ones (he started at 2000 rating too so he never actually got there with skill, and even that isn't anywhere clos to the level needed to solve 1000+ puzzles) or timed puzzle rush, which you could argue is different from survival but this dude couldn't even drop 30 puzzles, which someone with that good puzzle knowledge could def do in 3/5 minutes. Additionally I heard somewhere that he has an account he actively plays on that is 800 rated in blitz, which someone with good tactical vision would not be stuck at, but I haven't seen this account so I can't confirm that. Not saying this is 100% proof he is cheating but it is very suspicious and hard to believe in my opinion

I checked a little further and saw that apparently he claims that in this note chess.com wrote, they verified his survival run (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MLANyi28Pa2HygStl1o2w5SeeMrUIpNFgvmidYpNMWE/edit?tab=t.0) and that he basically plays 24/7 and memorizes all the hard puzzles. I'm not gonna lie the document looks hella AI generated and I find it hard to believe he memorizes every single puzzle he comes across in his 1000 puzzle run, (especially considering that puzzles 0-100 are still extremely hard for someone at his skill level and aren't at the level where he claims to memorize all of them) but if chess.com did thoroughly check his run then I guess it's official, kind of shady tho

He has all awards

144 achievements, not awards

Oh well, thank you for the information. I'm sure Chess.com knows about him and are fine with him, even by now. Cheaters mainly get caught somewhat quickly these days, so what I've been hearing anyway. I'm glad to see somebody have this level of success legitimately!

I mean in live games yes, but for puzzles cheaters barely get banned, nothing is stopping someone from using an engine to solve puzzles, the puzzle rush survival leaderboard is filled to the brim with people who used engines as you can tell they are like 1000 elo and solved hundreds of them. Additionally we don't really know how the fair play check worked, maybe he found a way to still cheat or maybe they only did it only certain parts of his run. Additionally it is mostly AI generated which I'm not sure a company like chess.com would do so he even could have written it himself.

Yeah I guess. Oh well, as I say good for him if he has done it legitimately. In this A.I day anything is technically possible...

I guess the other thing is all of his social media platform's are verified so my guessing is why would anybody cheat when they're this highlighted in the on-line space, if you know what I'm getting at?