Studies in lossless data compression

I’m going to start studying compression a lot more (yes inspired by the Hutter prize) so that I can hopefully be the first to win the competition. The prize money isn’t really important as I believe it will only work out to about 1-3 thousand euros. I’ve always had an interest in compression, so this just gives me a reason to study it more, and a distinct goal to follow. I have a lot of catching up to do in the lossless data compression field, so this is more of a long term goal.