I succeeded in getting my ass kicked, sort of. I really only got my ass kicked in one game, the rest of the games were very close. The first game I played was a real heartbreaker and I think the fact that I analyzed it before the end of the tournament really hurt me because I lost confidence in myself for missing such an easy win. Some of my classic errors told in this tournament, temporary loss of interest I think is hurting me the most, more about this soon. I went 0-4 and I was already scheduled to take a bye in the last round to drive home and I was afraid I would get a bye in the fifth round so I left last night got back to Reno about 7 this morning. Important thing is I actually learned a lot, also it was nice to get some good chess in, not enough of that in Reno. The drive home really sucked, especially since after two chess games and 6 hours of driving with only about an hour left I hit a snow storm and thankfully my car is all wheel drive so I could go 35-50 through it otherwise it would have taken much longer. Los Angeles is really cool though, land of four lane freeways. I don't know how it is during the week cause I heard traffic there is a bitch but I could easily get around at 80-100 anywhere I went which is cool. Big open freeways. It helped when I needed to think about my losses. I'll post them worst to best over the next week with more info on what I learned. I can't really do any worse in this section, I guess that's good.