Diary of a 10 Week Chess Improvement Student

Day 34 continued: More endgames: Active King and Pawn Endgames

This is the other video on endgames from Mat BobulaVera Menchik was Women's World Champion from 1927 until 1944, when she was killed by a German air raid.

Mat blog post on pawn endgames is here and contains a few puzzles: https://www.chess.com/blog/MatBobula/how-good-are-you-at-pawn-endgames

Some of them are unintuitive but when you are thinking about the rules of opposition they become more logical.

This video explains the concepts Pawn's square, opposition, King and the pawn vs King, shouldering, triangulation, zugzwang, Pawn majority and the passed Pawn:

The video starts with the basics: opposition and promoting your pawn in King and Pawn v King endgames using the key squares.

12 minutes in it is King and 3 pawns versus King and 4 pawns.

16 minutes in is the 1st puzzle from the blog post.

Practice against this position against the computer:

https://www.chess.com/practice/custom?fen=8/8/3p4/2k5/4P3/8/8/1K6%20w%20-%20-%200%201

20 minutes in is the 2nd puzzle from the blog post.

Practice against this position against the computer:

https://www.chess.com/practice/custom?fen=8/8/8/4p1p1/8/5P2/6K1/3k4%20w%20-%20-%200%201

Day 35: Rook endgames

Limited time today due to real life commitments, but I have taken a look at Mat's basic rook endgame puzzles, and did pretty badly at them 

https://www.chess.com/blog/MatBobula/how-good-are-you-at-rook-endgames

There's a webinar he has done on rook endgames. After I have finished watching the pawn endgames video I will watch that.

Sadly I am not likely to get to play more live games today, although maybe I will have time for a blitz game.

I took a bit more of a look at Mat's ebook on creating a plan. There is a position from a game in 2017 that he played where he evaluates all of the main aspects of the position and concludes "Black's position is slightly better". My first thought looking at the position is White is slightly better due to the strong bishop on g2. I entered the position into the computer to see what it thought and it evaluated +0.1 so neither side is really better here.

Day 36: Endgames continued

All the easy daily games seem to be over now and I am left with a bunch of games which are just one inaccuracy away from defeat. I've done enough of those for today so am back looking at the endgames videos and practice exercises.

I need to learn these pawn endgames before rushing onto the rook endgames.

Here is a summary of the ideas needed to solve the puzzles:

1st puzzle:

• Figure out whether you are playing for a win or a draw. In this puzzle you are playing for a draw
• Remember the key squares are two ranks ahead of the pawn and black wins if he can get there
• The only way to prevent reaching one of the key squares is to sacrifice your last pawn
• The only way to draw is by maintaining the opposition

2nd puzzle:

• As with the first puzzle, your opponent has an extra pawn and you are playing for a draw
• The difference here is your own pawn can prevent you from being able to maintain the opposition
• So you need to maintain distance opposition at all times until draw by repetition is reached

3rd puzzle:

• again down a pawn and playing for a draw
• use diagonal opposition when standard opposition means you are leaving the square

3rd pawn endgame practice:

https://www.chess.com/practice/custom?fen=8/8/8/3k4/8/2K3pP/6P1/8%20b%20-%20-%200%201

4th puzzle:

• white to move and can win due to a better placed king
• white's king needs to shoulder the black king to give the king enough time to capture black's last pawn and move out of the way to allow the white pawn to promote

pawn majority example (3 pawns vs 2 pawns)

• first move the pawn on the file that your opponent doesn't have
• avoid a backwards pawn

5th puzzle (3 pawns vs 3 pawns)

• pawn fractions: push the middle pawn
• If back captures, push the opposite pawn to the one opponent captured with
• you can then either capture or push and promote

position 38 minutes into the mastering pawn endgames video

• risk of stalemate
• black has the opposition so need to gain the opposition using triangulation
• we drop back and away from the pawn
• if black moves forward, we move forward and we have the opposition
• if black moves to the right so do we
• if black moves back to the original positions, so do we, and the difference is it is now black's turn to move: we have won the opposition using triangulation

trebuchet position (43 minutes in)

• zugswang example, we want black to move in towards the pawn first

Also see: https://www.chess.com/blog/dragon60/trebuchet

Reti position (46 minutes in)

• At first glance the position appears to be lost for White
• But by moving diagonally to e5, black can no longer both capture the white pawn and promote the black pawn
• Black chooses which option he wants (to capture or promote) and then White stops the other thing from happening, resulting in a draw

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9ti_endgame_study

Okay that's it for pawn endgames, now onto rook endgames:

rook vs bishop

• This is usually a draw
• With a bishop, the best plan is usually to move both the king and bishop into the corner
• Even if white has rook and rook pawn, it can still be a draw

rook vs knight (5 minutes in)

• also usually a draw
• keep your knight close to your king
• there are ways for the rook to trap the knight, or pin it to the king to win it, or checkmate the king when the knight is too far from the king

rook vs pawn, with enemy king 3 squares away from the pawn (10 minutes in)

• with king on the backrank, the rook can win by checkmate on the move after the pawn promotes
• The pawn can promote to a knight with check to win a tempo, but the rook and king may be able to trap it and win the game

rook vs pawn, with enemy king many squares away from the pawn

• easy draw

rook vs rook pawn, shouldering example (14 minutes in)

• shouldering helps the pawn to promote

rook vs rook pawn, with king on the 3rd rank (in the descriptive notation sense) (15 minutes in)

• rook moves to 4th rank cutting off the king
• when the gap between king and pawn is big enough, it is easy to capture pawn with the rook
• This doesn't work when not a rook pawn because the king can advanced behind the pawn

rook vs knight pawn example

• use shouldering to help promote the pawn, but not more than two squares away from the pawn
• if rook attacks pawn you move the king to protect the pawn

rook vs bishop pawn example (19 minutes in)

• king moves across to the other side of the pawn
• so with black pawn on f-file and black king on e-file, the white king moves to the g-file

rook vs center pawn example (22 minutes in)

• zwischenzug (in between) check to win a tempo, move rook into better position and ultimately win the game

rook and pawn vs rook (25 minutes in)

• will continue with this tomorrow

Day 37: Book Reading and Tournament Preparation

I have been reading the start of the book Discovering Chess Openings by John Emms.

There is this game that illustrates opening principles and blunders quite nicely

In this game White's blunders are g4?? giving Black the initiative and Ne2?? giving black mate in two.

Emms then talks about it being a bad idea to try to bring out the rooks in the opening. All of this is just the free sample of this book.

I have also been looking at a couple of books on the Tarrasch Defense. There's a book called the Complete Defense to Queen Pawn Openings by Eric Schiller, and a book called Fight 1.d4 with the Tarrasch!: A Complete Black Repertoire vs 1.d4 by Vassilios Kotronias.

Looking through my openings history, I have never played the Tarrasch Defense. I think I will try playing first against the computer and then in some blitz games, to see if it works for me.

I also noticed that Mat has a course on it here: https://www.chess.com/lessons/learn-to-play-the-tarrasch-defense

I plan to check this out soon as well.

I received an email telling me the draw for the cup match that will be starting this Thursday. I played three games against this opponent and lost all of them.

Those games had these openings:

https://www.chess.com/openings/Kings-Pawn-Opening-Duras-Gambit
https://www.chess.com/openings/Birds-Opening-Dutch-Variation-2.e3
https://www.chess.com/openings/Reti-Opening-Nimzowitsch-Larsen-Attack

As I am black there is no hope of him playing the Duras Gambit again.

Bird's Opening I have rarely come across and never studied it seriously. I will so a bit of study tonight though.

I don't know a lot about the Reti opening either.

He is a player who is comfortable playing anything though so it is not possible to prepare for anything that he might play.

Also in the past games I was roughly level in the opening and got outplayed in the middlegames so need to analyze how that happened and also look at the mistakes he made in those games and how I could exploit them if they come up again.

I've had a quick look through all of the gambits in GM Perelshteyn's Every Gambit Refuted course and I don't think any of those will come up as most of them follow 1.e4 e5

Tarrasch Defense

I played my first Tarrasch Defense game against the computer today:

Up to move 12 it follows the main line, or to give it is full name https://www.chess.com/openings/Tarrasch-Defense-Two-Knights-Rubinstein-Prague-Carlsbad-Variation...11.Be3-Re8-12.Rc1-Bf8 

After Isabel took the game out of book, I wasn't sure how to proceed and started making tactical blunders. This is just a first start and hopefully I will improve with practice.

On my second attempt I played the main line with 9.dxc5 against the Wendy bot and got a draw:

Day 38: Practicing Tarrasch Defense

I watched some of Mat's course on the Tarrasch last night, and read a bit more of Eric Schiller's book this morning.

My initial impression is the Tarrasch Defence is mostly an advanced opening for advanced players.

The first lesson in Mat's Tarrasch course is partly based on this Artur Yusupov Candidates match game:

The second lesson in Mat's Tarrasch course features a clever Queen trap in the main line (Carlsbad variation)

For practicing against the computer, enter the FEN for one of these QGD positions in analysis mode, click practice vs computer icon, then change the bot to the one you want to play against and then play 3...c5!

Queen's Knight Variation:

rnbqkbnr/ppp2ppp/4p3/3p4/2PP4/2N5/PP2PPPP/R1BQKBNR b KQkq - 1 3

3.Nf3

rnbqkbnr/ppp2ppp/4p3/3p4/2PP4/5N2/PP2PPPP/RNBQKB1R b KQkq - 1 3

3.g3

rnbqkbnr/ppp2ppp/4p3/3p4/2PP4/6P1/PP2PP1P/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 3

I have memorized the two main lines but tend to blunder quite soon after the game goes out of book.

These are the Tarrasch main line positions:

9.dxc5

r1bq1rk1/pp2bppp/2n2n2/2Pp4/8/2N2NP1/PP2PPBP/R1BQ1RK1 b - - 0 9

Here are examples of winning with the Tarrasch main line with 9.dxc5:

You can see that an effective strategy is often to get a pawn advanced to assist one or two rooks attacking on the 7th rank. If you can promote it that's great too.

Game an early pawn capture

https://www.chess.com/openings/Tarrasch-Defense-Two-Knights-Variation-5...Nc6-6.dxc5 :

In this variation capturing the pawn with 6...Bxc5 is a mistake. It is too early to capture the pawn because the d pawn is left hanging! The correct move is to continue the normal development with 6...Nf6

Day 39: First OTB Cup game ends in disappointment

I received the 6th lesson in the course today. It is on opening repertoire. I have started learning the Tarrasch this week, and plan to continue with that this weekend. I have an e4 repertoire and am in the process of deciding on the d4 repertoire.

At the chess club I was the first to arrive except for the club president. We started playing a practice game, he played the Queen's Gambit so I tried playing the Tarrasch Defence for the first time. He seemed surprised when I played 3...c5. The game seemed to go out of book almost immediately after that although it could be a sideline variation that I don't know yet. I didn't write down the moves but I took a photo of the position we reached before we had to abandon the practice game.

In the cup game my opponent played the Bird's opening again. I have never studied that opening seriously or came up with any plan to play against it. It didn't matter too much because the game was of course decided by middlegame tactics, but I would have had a bit more confidence if I had a prepared response instead of playing quite passive opening moves.

I am disappointed with a few of the moves that I played and resigned on move 29. However my opponent is more than 400 points above my rating and has decades of experience so the result was what I expected it to be.

Computer says 79% accuracy for me and 92% for the opponent.

The Bc6 move was an even bigger mistake than hanging the rook at the end. I thought for 4 minutes but really should have spent 10 minutes thinking about that position. It is more difficult when your opponent is playing so fast, but I had enough time to think properly instead of gambling there.

Day 40: Intrigued by the Pseudo-Tarrasch

I put the first few moves of last evening's practice game into the computer and it told me the opening was the Pseudo-Tarrasch. How does this differ from the real Tarrasch?

I found this Pseudo-Tarrasch miniature game where Black wins:

This is the position I reached in the Tarrasch practice game last night. There were likely somewhere between 15 and 20 moves played:

I felt that White was better but I did not know by how much. The computer says White has a massive advantage, so I don't feel ready to play this opening in any important games yet. I will keep reading and trying ideas out against the computer.

The Hanging Pawns guys (Stjepan Tomic) says the move 4.e3 used to be popular many years ago but is very passive and blocks in white's knight and nowadays every position after move 8 is the Rubinstein main line position. That is not my experience; I think there is every chance that my club president will continue to play e3 at least until he starts losing with it, so I will look into what moves can be played to take advantage as Black.

Day 41: Learning Opening Theory by studying GM games

There are currently three openings that I am interested in learning more about:

• Tarrasch Defence - is much more interesting than the standard Queen's Gambit Declined game but very double edged and not the most beginner friendly. I would like to get strong enough to play this opening confidently
• Vienna Gambit - At 1000 level I have found this to be the best opening for White by far. About one third of the time in three Black accepts the gambit and half the time Black accepts it the wrong way. I have recently bought the book Vienna Gambit for the club player
• Bird's Opening - because the guy at my chess club is beating me with it

I used to think of Bird's Opening as a bit of a joke opening like the Bongcloud, but after reading the start of Bird's Opening: Move by Move by Cyrus Lakdawala I am reconsidering that view.

Gothamchess likes to tell the story of a kindergarten kid who got taught to play the Bird's opening and got almost immediately checkmated twice in two successive games

I agree that this is not the best opening to teach kindergarten kids, but the kid only lost due to a massive blunder.

Here are two famous games featuring this opening which are covered in the introduction:

Chapter One of the book is on From's Gambit, which is Black's most aggressive response to 1.f4

Cyrus says it was played all the time in 2005 at the top level, but never played by Titled players anymore because modern computer engines have calculated how to beat it.

It is still seen often by club players. White is thrown on the defensive for a long time and Black has practical chances.

This game between two of the top British players, features an offshoot variation of From's Gambit:

Cyrus summarizes that White should accept the gambit.

Another example of beating From's Gambit presented by agadmator:

Here is a video on the From's Gambit from Black's side:

If White does not want to accept the gambit then (s)he can transpose to the King's Gambit with 2.e4

Tarrasch Defence with 4.e3

Mat has a lesson on this:

https://www.chess.com/lessons/learn-to-play-the-tarrasch-defense/learn-to-play-the-tarrasch-defense-lines-with-e3

Day 42: Playing Bad Chess, and then a perfect game

I sometimes gauge whether or not I am in form by playing against a 1500 bot. I beat them when I'm playing well and lose when I am not. I lost several times against Antonio bot due to stupid blunders, so decided to play some blitz chess rather than more serious rapid games.

I played two Vienna Gambit games. Both times the gambit was declined sub-optimally and both were drawn by repetition:

In 2015 Sveshnikov wrote about 3...d6

"This is usually played only by relatively weak players who do not know the theory. The move is logical and solid enough but too passive."

4.Nf3 is the correct continuation for White, and then Black has several different options:

• Bg4
• exf4
• Nc6
• Nbd7
• Be7

I have added additional lines to the game analysis for those different possibilities

In this game there is a Queen fork tactic that I didn't know about until he played it. That made the game a lot harder but I had a big time advantage towards the end and was hoping to win on time.

In the next game I was hoping my endgame skills would be enough to win but I blocked myself in. Opponent declined my draw offer and then moved the King into the threefold repetition position.

I made the mistake of playing 5.Nf3 when the correct move is 5.d4

If Black plays 5...Nc6 6.e5 then either 6...Ng8 7.Nf3 or 6...Qe7? 7.Be2 Ng8 8.Nf3

If Black plays 5...Ng6 6.e5 Ng8 7.Nf3

Vienna Gambit tends to come up a lot in blitz chess.

Despite the not so great form I managed to get a couple of scrappy blitz wins and then this amusingly easy win when I got 100% accuracy

I got my blitz rating up to a new personal best

Also after studying Vienna Gambit theory, I managed to scrape a win against the Isabel bot for the first time (without hints/takebacks).

In that game I had a big advantage at the end of the opening, blundered it into a losing position in the middlegame, and then won the king and pawn endgame.

Mood:

Day 43: Learn To Play The Tarrasch Defense: Lines With e3, and Early Dark-Square Bishop opening

Day 44: Zhuralev Counter-gambit lines

In the beginner level blitz games you see the Zhuralev counter-gambit fairly often after playing 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3

It is not a bad opening; I have read that Nakamura sometimes plays it, but it is not too difficult for White to deal with.

The bishop comes out to attack the knight, but the knight is not pinned so the hunter becomes the hunted. Here are a few lines that I created:

It looks like I am going to go through to the 3rd round of the Team United Kingdom Under 1300 club tournament. This tournament started with 124 players so it is a big one and I'm excited to be doing so well in it. I won another game today and have an interesting endgame in the final daily game.

Day 45: Puzzles reboot

Virtually every game that I lose, perhaps even literally every game, is due to tactical mistakes. So to get better I need to get stronger at tactics. For the first week I was pretty focused on puzzles, but then drifted a bit. From now on I am going to report on the puzzles I do each day.

I spent about an hour today on chess.com puzzles. My rating keeps fluctuating above and below the 1700 mark. I have got it back up to 1722.

I want to get this up to 2000 in the next few weeks. 

Day 46: Puzzle Veteran

I unlocked the puzzle veteran achievement today.

https://www.chess.com/awards/kevinosh/achievements#achievement_tactics_veteran

I received lesson 7 of Mat's course today. It's on evaluation of the position

I will take a proper look through it this weekend.

Day 48: Intermediate tactics reboot

About 3 weeks ago I went through the intermediate tactics lessons. I didn't record how many of them I got right and don't know how much I memorized.

Today I have started going through the lessons again. I got the two correct and the third one wrong.

I also found a free course on another site called "Typical Tactical Tricks: 500 Ways To Win!" these are very easy hanging piece puzzles. I did 150 of them. There were still about 5% that I got wrong, that should really be 0% I think if I get it to 100% success playing quickly I will be a much better blitz player.

Mat has published his webinar here: https://www.chess.com/blog/MatBobula/webinar-how-to-improve-your-game-in-10-weeks-1

Day 49: 500 Ways To Win, and Mat's Webinar

My daily rating continues to climb faster than my rapid rating. It has gone from 1308 up to 1393 since I started the Bobula course. I am proud to have beaten a ~1600 player for the first time today:

Whether the bigger daily games climb is a good or a bad thing I am unsure, but my rapid rating has no chance of climbing if I am not playing games. I will try to get to that later today.

This morning I have been continuing the 500 Ways To Win course. It's a beginner level course that starts with hanging pieces and then double attacks and pins and skewers. Mostly pretty easy but occasionally I miss simple tactics so I think it is good to reinforce the basic tactical awareness.

In this webinar Mat shows the training schedule that got him up to International Master standard. I have not followed this study pattern before. It is not possible for me to have 2 hours of study every evening on top of playing chess games. I am doing the 30 minutes of tactics each day but need to see how much time I have left after that and how to divide that time between playing and studying.

Mat says he is pretty sure that everyone who follows his course actively will gain at least 100 rating points. I started at 960 rapid and think it is realistic for me to reach at least 1060 by the end of the 10 weeks. It will mostly depend on how much time I spend playing the rapid games.

I played one 30 minute game today and it lasted almost the full hour. We both had 3 minutes left on the clock when the opponent resigned. Opponent played well for a 900 but walked into a double attack tactic and that was the main difference.

"You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player."

Day 50: Greek Gift Sacrifice examples

I have been continuing the Typical Tactical Tricks: 500 ways to win! course this morning. The course starts off extremely easy but about 200 puzzles in it is noticeably more difficult.

There was a greek gift sacrifice example that I did not get right, so I spent some time producing this library of greek gift examples. At the moment there are only three positions but this still contains a lot of analysis and hopefully it is useful:

https://www.chess.com/library/collections/greek-gift-positions-2g8DeT6Fx

I came across a Scandinavian gambit opening I hadn't seen before, it is like the Danish gambit but with the black pieces:

It is the Blackburne-Kloosterboer gambit.

I wasn't sure what to do so I just took the second pawn. It worked out okay. The engine says taking the gambit is the best move for White.

Continuing to learn the Vienna opening, in this game moving the knight back to f3 was a blunder. I was thinking where can I move the knight? I should have been thinking "Do I have any checks?" I managed to win it in the end though by ignoring the pawn grabs and going for checkmate.

At the end of the day I played against the Joel bot on my phone and beat him. I was White and played the Sicilian Alapin. I have now beaten all three 1600 rated bots and can proceed to the 1700 bots another day.

Day 51: More ways to win

Completed the course Typical Tactical Tricks: 500 Ways to win course today.

You are not really supposed to advertise other chess sites on here but if you are serious about your chess, I am sure you will be able to figure it out.

It is quite similar to the book Everyone's First Chess Workbook by Peter Giannatos. I prefer to do these online though because moving the pieces feels more natural than writing down answers as notation and the time it takes to solve gets automatically recorded and I don't need to spend time looking up answers.

The final chapter is a mix of puzzles with all of the themes covered earlier on in the course. For players around 1000 to 1200 I highly recommend the mix chapter.

Day 52: Missed

No time for any chess today unfortunately, except for one or two moves in daily games.

Day 53: Learning Openings Thoroughly With Lucas Chess

I am currently learning the Vienna game: Max Lange Defence variation.

There is a course by John Bartholomew that recommends 3.g3

[Event "Vienna game, Max Lange defence"]
[Site "Line 1"]
[Date "2021-12-15"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 Bc5 4.Bg2 d6 5.Na4 Bb6 6.Nxb6 axb6 7.Ne2 Nge7 8.d4 exd4
9.Nxd4 O-O 10.O-O f5 11.Bg5 Nxd4 12.Qxd4 h6 13.Bxe7 Qxe7 14.exf5 Rxf5 15.Rae1
Re5 16.Bd5+ Kh8 17.Rxe5 Qxe5 18.Qxe5 dxe5 19.Re1 c6 20.Bf7

The problem with learning a line 20 moves deep is there is virtually no chance of it coming up in a real game. Much better to start by learning the ideas behind an opening.

Anyway, I added the Bartholomew line into Lucas Chess as a starter. Then, training against the engine we came up with some other lines.

I made some mistakes in the opening lines, it told me to try again, and then I came up with this line that Lucas Chess likes.

The following line was produced by myself as White and a 1200 level engine Irina 0.15:

[ECO "C25"]
[Opening "Vienna: Paulsen variation"]

1.e4 ! e5 ! 2.Nc3 ! Nc6 ! 3.g3 ! Bb4 ?! 4.Bg2 Bxc3 5.bxc3 Nf6 6.d3 O-O 7.Bg5 d6
8.Nh3

An analysis of the moves reveals although this line is okay for White, I made a couple of inaccuracies.

Here we can see that 6.d3 is only the third best move and the best move is 6.c4

If the line is added to the opening, it appears in the tree of moves. You can drag the pieces on this board in this window to create more variations.

Here is the Copy Cat Queen Trap line:

Here is another line that gives White a small advantage:

After getting a better idea of how to play the Vienna Game, I will go back to learning the Tarrasch Defence.

For more information see https://omgchess.blogspot.com/2015/08/learning-openings-thoroughly-with-lucas.html

I played a 15|10 Vienna Gambit game today. Opponent accepted the gambit and then brought the Queen out instead of retreating the knight. I missed the Nd5 move attacking both the Queen and the pawn on c7. Must try to remember for next time. I did not play very well but managed to win on time. Up to 1033 now.

Day 54: Game Night

I have my first inter club tournament game tonight. I don't know who I am playing or whether I will be White or Black, just that I am due to play on board 6.

I have been practicing the chess.com puzzles and finally got back above 1800 mark again.

Played a warmup Vienna game against the computer. My only mistake was the opening with 6.Nge2. The correct move here is to just capture the knight.

In the cup game I had an easily winning position and then made an almighty blunder, I literally hung mate in one. I don't know why I didn't see Qh1 was mate because I spent about 4 minutes worrying about how Qh2 might be checkmate before I blundered.

After the early defeat he offered me a friendly game. In a lapse of etiquette (state of shock perhaps?) I took the white pieces again and played the Vienna again. This time I got to play my beloved Vienna Gambit, he played 3...Nc6? and I went on to win the game quite easily.

Opponent is higher rated than me so I have to take the positives and put the massive blunder down to experience and never do it again. I have not blundered mate in one for some time and am still a bit shocked that I did that.

After the OTB game I decided to play an online 15|10 game. I played the Tarrasch Defence for the first time. I actually misplayed the opening quite badly, but I still managed to win the game due to some middlegame tactics.

I had been afraid to play the Tarrasch Defence because it is quite a complicated opening that I don't yet know well. However at the lower levels, it is almost never played and it seems that whoever is playing as White doesn't know how to play it either. I will try to get better at it, but crucially I won the game and got my rapid rating up to 1041.

I am now quite confident that I can fulfill Mat's prediction/claim about increasing by at least 100 rating points over the 10 weeks.

I received lesson 8 from Mat tonight which is on creating a plan. I didn't do last week's exercises (although I had intended to) so this weekend I need to do both the evaluating the position exercises and the exercises on creating a plan.