Nova Daily - 13 May 2025: Overcompensation
Hi!
Today I inadvertently had a bit of a mental setback. I've got Robert Greene's The Daily Laws. These "Daily Laws" are ideas that come from his books as well as interviews he has given or columns he has made. In today's Daily Law, Robert Greene talks about something he calls "Deep narcissism."
Overcompensation
As Robert Greene indicates in The Laws of Human Nature, Chapter 2 (of which today's Daily Law is an excerpt), we are all self-absorbed to some extent. Greene describes deep narcissism as an extreme on the spectrum. These people are self-absorbed to such a degree that it becomes toxic.
Narcissism is born out of insecurity and is a form of overcompensation (rather than "I'm A/B/C" the train of thought is "I'm NOT X/Y/Z"). To put it simply, it is the attitude annd behaviour that someone displays to mask and hide their insecurities. While they can come across as very strong people, their insecurities come to the surface when they are being challenged. Recently I heard an extreme case in which a girl was able to touch her toes without bending her knees while her boyfriend couldn't, and scared her out of the house over such a simple dumb trivial thing. I'm glad for her that they're no longer together.
Another sign of deep narcissism, and this is the point that hit me in the face with a hammer, is the following:
In a relationship, they will slowly make the partner cut off contact with friends—there must be no competition for attention.
- Robert Greene, The Daily Laws, "May 13: Recognize Deep Narcissists before You Fall for Them"
If you read some of my older posts, you can understand why that hit me hard today.
Other than this, I'm quite fine. I managed to more or less maintain my bullet rating: I only lost 25 rating points over a long stretch of games, and there were some wins against 2800-rated players.
The analysis
Yesterday's game was only twelve moves deep, but still it's important to take the analysis of such short games seriously. There's nothing more shameful than losing because of coming up unprepared.
However, based on how the game went, I don't think that it's that useful to include model games. The game is so short that any game will do.
The analysis:
In the end there is something to gain from such a short game as well.
What can I take away from this game
- Sometimes it's tempting to play these longer games as if they're blitz games. But there's a name for that: hasty decision-making. And it's a no-no in longer time controls.
- Against the Botvinnik system, black can obtain some easy equality by maintaining the symmetry for a long time to come.
- The most challenging way to play this line is 5.Nf3 with a quick d2-d4. It pays to look into this: I played a Vote Chess game with this system, which turned into a long annotated game that exists somewhere in my own databases. I had decided not to share this game on my blog, but I should look into that game again.
In closing: I do like to drag my opponents into the mud of having to fight out dry boring games, but I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea (let alone watch those games). Many players dislike dry equality and will try everything they can to evade it. This is nice because it means that it gives me a psychological edge over those people, and I might be able to pick up a lot of points because of people's own overstretching. For my readers: should I get such games, I'll warn you in advance.
