Hey,
is anyone else playing in Karlsruhe these days?
I’ve just visited the venue… this is HUGE! Registration is still in progress, but it were 2700+ when I checked last. All playing on the same floor in one big hall.
Edit: The doors to the “main” hall with the 400 or so top boards + the Classics were still closed… so even bigger.
I do! 
And I know that Christopher Yoo and the 2 German Jonasses (Rosner and Hacker) are here. And Hans Niemann, although I do not know if we can call him an academy member.
We cannot, he was with us only for a year!
The tournament finished yesterday. A mixed bag for me. An incredible experience with so many players, spectators and the kind of vibe I have never felt at a chess tournament before. I beat a FM for the first in a classical game in my chess career and had lots of chances against other strong players as well. Nine rounds of classical chess in five days is tough.
Overall I definitely felt like a notable increase in my chess understanding through the three questions, homework club and so forth. So that’s definitely a plus. It didn’t translate into the desired results yet, but I’ll keep doing the work and putting in the effort.
For me it was also a mixed bag. My rating was 50 points shy of being able to play the A group, so I was seeded around 170 in the B group, meaning I would get lower rated opponents (mostly the younger ones ;-)) all the time.
I made too much draws, maybe related to my uninspiring opening “repertoire”, leaving not much play left in the positions I got. Works fine against higher rated opponents, but not when playing down.
Blundered in time trouble on move 40 a winning position into losing after having declined a draw (afternoon round). That was quite painful.
Probably will turn out to around -17 Elo or so, and -43 DWZ (local German rating). Of course, when you win, you do so against someone from abroad without a local rating… 
But the atmosphere was great, and a tournament of that scale was truly amazing. But the schedule was very tough, with the afternoon rounds often starting late because one game was still going on from the morning until shortly before. And the first night was ridiculously short after the (late) evening round on day one.