| Week | Blitz rating |Rapid rating | Blitz win/loss | Rapid win/loss |
|------|--------------|-------------|----------------|----------------|
| 1 | N/A | 429 | 3-1 | 4-1 |
-| 2 | 686 | 508 | 3-1 | 0-0 |
+| 2 | 686 | 508 | 6-6 | 0-0 |
+| 3 | 725 | 508 | 1-3 | 2-0 |
+| 4 | 694 | 535 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
Notes:
[daily game versus TPTCOAT]:
https://www.chess.com/game/daily/561280087
+### Week 2
+
+From this week on, the study plan decreases the games played a little
+to make room for studying the games from _Logical Chess Move by Move_.
+Which is a fun book!
+It's a bit of an old book, so some of the analyses are by now
+demonstrably erroneous due to further developments in the understanding
+of chess (and the advent of chess engines), but it's interesting.
+It goes through a bunch of historical master-level games and explains
+the ideas behind (and sometimes flaws in) each move.
+
+Yesterday I also got to get started on _Winning Chess Openings_ (okay,
+that's a lie, i've been doing a bit of extracurricular reading on it
+already. but i did more yesterday).
+Which is also a great book.
+I've reached the section of the book where it's basically giving a
+whirlwind tour of every classical king's pawn opening (which is to say,
+ones beginning 1. e4 e5, with both players moving the pawn in front of
+their king two squares).
+Next it's gonna do the same for classical queen's pawn openings (1. d4
+d5), and then for modern king's/queen's pawn openings (where the second
+player doesn't mirror the first's move, intending to contest or attack
+their position in the center in some other way).
+
+The games this week were all blitz games.
+I went 6-6, (3-1, 2-2, and 1-3 across the different days I played
+them).
+Looking back I notice I went 6-1 with the white pieces and 0-5 with the
+black pieces.
+Huh.
+(And the black games were all in the Caro-Kann, which is how I respond
+to 1. e4.)
+Gonna need to work on that I guess, hehe.
+
+I won my daily game that was going really excitingly.
+Played another game against the same person as well as starting a new
+game.
+The rematch went in my favor again, and now we're doing another (now
+unrated) game.
+The new daily game I got a bit reckless and tried a Qa5+ tactic (this
+is moving your queen to check the opponent's king with the intention of
+then capturing a different piece with the queen when they have to move
+to defend; awkwardly I failed to notice that they could both block the
+check and defend the piece I was going after by moving their queen)
+that hasn't panned out so I had to spend several moves getting my queen
+to safety.
+I've managed to stabilize the situation so we'll see how that works
+out. :)
+
+## Week 3
+
+Blitz games didn't go so hot this week.
+My big weakness there was not thinking quickly enough and getting short
+on time.
+Week 4 will be all blitz games so hopefully that'll help me work on
+that.
+The rapid games went well, though. :)
+Daily games remain fun but have slowed down a bit.
+
+I finished up the Classical King's Pawn Openings chapter in the
+openings book. And part 1 of the endgames book!
+Next week will be Classical Queen's Pawn Openings time, plus some less
+noob-level endgame study.
+
+Outside the study plan per se, I've been working some on my opening
+repertoire.
+I ended up watching some videos from a chess coach who advocates an
+approach based on going deep on a main line (both in the sense of going
+all the way into the middlegame, and also in the sense of thoroughly
+analyzing the line so as to develop a strong understanding of the plans
+and motivations of both sides throughout), then working backwards and
+analyzing in similar depth any branches where the opponent might make a
+different move.
+It's an intriguing approach, and I want to give it a try.
+I've gone deep on one main line in the Ruy Lopez (which is what I aim
+to play with the white pieces), though I haven't done the branching
+out yet.
+I haven't really done similarly on other openings yet either.
+I kinda need to decide what defense I want to use against 1. d4.
+I've gone back and forth on it (I have played very few games against it
+lately tbh), but I think at this point I'm deciding between the
+Grünfeld Defense and an approach based on the Nimzo-Indian and either
+Queen's Indian or Bogo-Indian.
+I might also consider trying to switch from the Caro-Kann against 1. e4
+to a Sicilian Defense.
+I like the Caro-Kann, but it's hard to find a good source on the
+theory, and it doesn't seem too successful or popular at the top-level
+lately so I can't look at those games for ideas either.
+In contrast the Sicilian is the most common response to 1. e4, and I've
+found some great books and such on it.
+Anyway, interesting stuff. ^^
+
+That's been week 3.
+
[^daily explanation]:
"Daily" is just what chess.com calls games with such a time control.
Chess.com is very popular (and according to the data gathered by that
Lady’s Gitweb / Wiki / blobdiff