---
title: Part 2 of My 100 Days of Chess
description: Getting used to correspondence and continuing with studying and blitz games.
image: https://image.lichess1.org/display?fmt=webp&h=550&op=thumbnail&path=matthewkcanada:ublog:8pOkC9sK:BqIWJLhj.jpg&w=880&sig=07c575ea96eb7b5a8bbcd7e85ba39cd7862a75f3
---

It looks like I'm really going to stretch out my 100 days. I've chosen to only count days where I intentionally study or play full games. I started mid-September and then my effort was almost immediately derailed by more work at work and my signing up for the [1st Chesspunks Correspondence Tournament](https://www.chess.com/tournament/1st-chesspunks-correspondence-tournament/pairings/2). Will I finish my 100 days of chess before next September? I don't know, but at no point in the last month have I felt like I'm not learning something or just getting more comfortable with the game.

## Correspondence chess

### End of Round 1 of the tournament

I wrote a [blog post](https://lichess.org/@/MatthewKCanada/blog/first-time-playing-correspondence/Jkpl4ytK) of my initial impression of correspondence chess and the correspondence tournament. Since then, I've become much more comfortable with the format. It's really quite enjoyable. I've started to be able to visualize the board even when I'm not looking at. I'm still new, so when I double check on the actual board, I often find that I've inserted extra ranks or files or mistakenly remembered pieces on the wrong squares, but I figure that's all part of the process.

### Starting to feel like an actual chess player

Most of all, the tournament has made me feel like a real chess player for the first time since I returned to chess in March. Regardless of the result of the game, I feel like I'm finally calculating well and bringing the best game I can to my opponents. I've even had some notable wins that I'm very proud of, one of which got me into the second round of the correspondence tournament. I hadn't known that there were multiple rounds (I hadn't really thought about it), and I was looking forward to it all being over. Now that I've gotten over the shock, :) I'm really looking forward to 8 more games played 4 at a time. It's going to be intense and also interesting.

### Winning 4 games on time is not ideal

There were 6 people in my group in the first round, but only 4 showed up to play. Unfortunately, that means that even though I went +3 -3 =0 for the round with the people who were actually playing, I ended up with a +7 -3 =0 record, which places me much higher in the standings then my performance deserves. In other words, I have a good chance of being slaughtered in Round 2 (it just started and I'm the lowest rated of my group of 5). If you're my opponent, I hope I will or have put up a good fight and made the game interesting.

## Blitz chess and turning off ratings

For November, I decided to take advantage of the new feature on Lichess to turn off player ratings on the website. Although rating isn't a large factor for my anxiety, it doesn't hurt not to see it. It turns chess into more of a video game. The problem is that the feature is only rolled out on the website itself, and not yet on the mobile version, so I can still accidentally see how bad (or sometimes good) I'm doing.

I had also planned to play at least three games a day of blitz, rapid, or classical for the month. I managed to do almost a week of blitz before I felt that the pressure to play every day wasn't doing me any good. On the plus side, I now qualify to play in blitz arenas on Lichess and I've stopped hesitating when hitting the button to start a new game.

## Days 8-18 (Oct 5-Nov 7)

The correspondence tournament has been instructive enough that I'm going to count each round as a virtual day of my 100 days.

Day 8

* Round 1, 1st Chesspunks Correspondence Tournament)
* Record: +7 -3 =0 (+3 -3 =0 rated)

Day 9

* Next video of GothamChess Intermediate Bootcamp
* Lichess puzzles

Day 10

* Two more Intermediate Bootcamp videos
* Puzzle Rush Survival mode

Day 11

* One more Intermediate Bootcamp video
* Chess.com rated puzzles

Day 12-16

* 5+0 games
    * +0 -3 =0
    * +2 -1 =0
    * +1 -2 =0
    * +0 -3 =0
    * +1 -2 =0