Nova Daily - 12 June 2025: Janus

Hi!

Almost no chess today.

Somewhere between the mockery that I wrote about that opponent that aborted the game and went ballistic after I played the brilliant 1.c2-c4!!, I mentioned the idea of the milestone, and the idea of the before/after. Meeting an opponent that loses his cool over the English isn't quite the life-changing event, but this idea of the before/after had a little bit of a foreshadowing aspect to it.

Janus

Janus is a Roman god with two faces. These two faces are each other's opposites, and the image can represent many different things. WikiPedia cites transitions and dualities as well as the gateways that represent these transitions and dualities. The present is marked by the opposites of past and future, and Janus is also the god of endings and beginnings. Because of this, the first month of the year is named for the Roman god.

As a symbol for duality, for good and evil, the name is used in the 1995 Bond movie GoldenEye. An organisation of top-flight arms dealers that holds its headquarters in St. Petersburg is lead by an unreliably described enigma that goes by the name of Janus. Bond unmasks this Janus figure as a former MI6 agent, a friend and ally presumed dead.

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (see the thumbnail image), one teacher is a two-faced figure. The body of Quirinus Quirrel, the stuttering and insecure professor, is host to the soul of Voldemort, which causes the body to have two faces.

Today was a bit of a Janus day for me.

The good...

As a non-paying member I get to play one Puzzle Battle per day. I can get paired with a wide range of opponents. Sometimes I get opponents that aren't as quick or as skilled, and sometimes I get people with whom it becomes a real battle.

Today I had an opponent that I have great respect for: GM Victor Bologan. I know him from several of his writings. Recently he released his autobiography Making My Move. I haven't read it in full yet (somehow I'm not quite as drawn to reading biographies cover to cover), but I did scan through some of the chapters. Once I've read the whole biography I'll let you know what I think of it.

I have great respect for GM Victor Bologan. But when I played against him for my daily Puzzle Battle, there's only one thing that counts:

...and the bad.

It's perfectly normal to not know something, and it should also be perfectly normal to say that. The great thing of an open mind (and I mentioned this in relation to how youth players learn quickly) is that it can accept that it doesn't know everything. I usually get scared if people pretend to know all the answers, because that's unhealthy and possibly dangerous.

When I'm in the process of getting to know someone, I like to take my time. It takes patience to get to know someone, especially when the type of interaction might be romantic in the long run.

Recently I started going out with someone. We're living in different places, so we can't see each other that often. For me that works just fine: this way I can slowly get to know the other person little by little and see if there is some future in it. The first two dates that we had were really fun.

Unfortunately, that came to an end today. The impatience of the other person, and the actions on their part that this involves, were sufficiently scary and alarming to make me realise that I have to cut it off. Sad as it is, because the two dates were a lot of fun.

Tomorrow I'll be playing my rapid game again and get back on track. All at its own pace, no hurry.

But in the mean time, let's just appreciate that life can be good. I mean, despite what I had to do today, I also won in Puzzle Battle against a 2600+ GM!