Nova Daily - 22 May 2025: Gaslighting

Hi!

Earlier today something happened in one of my games that I want to briefly address here. In one of my games (I'm not going to say which one it is, and I'd appreciate if you, my dear reader, wouldn't go looking for it) my opponent started trash-talking from the start of the game. I don't mind a good banter and I love a good roast. However, there are some things that at some point I hoped I didn't have to explain to people.

Gaslighting

Let me give you a crash course in how not to behave during your online games with me.

If:

• You don't know me
• You can't be bothered to ask me even one question
• You have no human decency

Then don't:

• Criticise every move that I play.
• Make an OTB rating estimate that's several hundreds of points off.
• Tell me that I'm wasting my time and money on bad training.
• Put your own "expertise" on display unasked.
• Put your resume on the table unasked.
• Pitch your training, suggest to work together, or ask me for any other games.

End of crash course.

Belittling other people to point to yourself as the "solution" is not the type of behaviour that I'd expect from a reliable, cooperative and supporting training partner or coach. That is the type of behaviour that I'd expect from either a tyrannical spouse or a trainer that feels their student has outgrown them and wants to keep the bird caged. Such type of behaviour has got a name: gaslighting.

"Good for you" was about all the response I had spare for them, and after I had ejected from the game (luckily my position was already atrocious by that point so I had no compunction about resigning) I sent them a one-way ticket to that beautiful list of pitiful cases of people that have burned up their goodwill with me.

(Initially I had a much more vile and malicious text here, but I decided to clean it up a bit and make it more reader-friendly. I'll save the venom for the cases who really deserve it.)

Just remember that you don't have to do much to make the world a little bit nicer. At times, all you have to do is to not act like horse s_*t. And it's much easier than you think.

The game

In today's game I was paired with an NM. This is essentially the same level of title as CM, except that it's not extended by every federation, and the FIDE doesn't acknowledge it as an official title. Depending on your culture, the NM and CM titles might be frowned upon, as they're a long stretch away from what people might consider "real" titles: IM and GM. However, thanks to chesscom, there is an incentive to obtain any of these titles: Diamond membership for life, participation in tournaments for titled players such as Titled Tuesday and Bullet Brawl, and a stronger likelihood of becoming Top Blogger. And it looks cool on you to have a title.

What the NM and CM titles signal to me is twofold. On the one hand they have demonstrated that they can play chess well, and they deserve my respect for it. However, they've never reached 2300+, and that means that they aren't invincible. They can be defeated.

So, when I saw I was paired with an NM in my rapid game today, I was thrilled, and motivated to give it my best shot.

My thoughts during the game:

Quite the game! Most likely nothing perfect, but it was a very fierce battle.

To work in advance for the recap: I recognised that I don't take my opponent's ideas into account properly, so that's something that I'll definitely have to work on going forward.