+## Week 4
+
+Once again I've done poorly in blitz, alas (0-4, 1-3, and 2-2 on the
+three days I played blitz games).
+My big weak points in those games were:
+
+1. Opening unfamiliarity, which isn't necessarily a big deal at my
+ level in slower time controls, but in blitz it means I have to spend
+ a lot of time thinking about it early on and I suffer from time
+ pressure later.
+2. Time management (contributed to by the preceding and contributing to
+ the following).
+3. Blundering my pieces. >.>
+
+I did have some quite effective attacking play in the wins, including
+one where I used it to recover from a mistake into a win.
+I think I really need to work on thinking faster, though.
+Which probably means I should do more tactics puzzles, possibly in a
+more structured way.
+That won't necessarily help me actually think faster, but it'll train
+my ability to recognize important tactical patterns faster anyway.
+So that would mean I don't need to expend as much explicit thinking on
+that sort of thing.
+
+My daily games have gone well.
+Both my rated game and my unrated game against TPTCOAT started out with
+me on the back foot a bit, but then I managed to outplay my opponent
+and start gradually closing out the game.
+After winning both of those, I started another rated game and another
+unrated game, and have won the latter already with a somewhat early
+checkmate.
+The rated game is about to end in my favor.
+I experimented with the Sicilian Defense there, though my opponent went
+for the Closed Sicilian, which I haven't looked into at all.
+I ended up pulling off a [windmill][windmills] that took four of their
+pawns for free.
+Later I realized that I had gained the ability to checkmate them about
+halfway through that, but eh, no harm in grabbing the material just in
+case I miscalculated the mate.
+
+My opening study and preparation is getting more thorough now.
+I've studied the main lines of the Grünfeld (my defense against 1. d4)
+and prepared my preferred response against the Caro-Kann and the
+trickier variant of the Scandinavian Defense as white.
+I've also studied the main lines of the Najdorf Sicilian (my main
+defense against 1. e4, although I'll need to do a bit more studying to
+know how to handle a couple of different ways White can play instead of
+going into open Sicilian positions).
+
+This week is back to some rapid games, so I think those will go better
+for me. :)
+