When I got invited to play in the BCC championship, I wasn't too sure what to expect. I'm not really used to the one-game-a-week model, and beyond that it was actually (perhaps surprisingly) my first serious round robin. Additionally, the field was a bit unusual in its spread: the top seed, IM Shmelov, was nearly 800 points higher rated than the lowest seed! Coming in, I didn't have any real expectations -- mostly, I just wanted to "survive" the tournament and avoid any major upsets.