The reason I pulled away from the X-Mas Grands is because, say, I don't log on in the next 24 hours, I am royally screwed and the small timebanks starts chewing up. For example, say I can only move once a day at 8:00am in the morning, and my opponent then moves at 8:30am, then the next morning I sleep in a little and get up at 9:30 am, bam, 1 hour of chewed up time in the timebank!
If there is some family "emergency" during the X-Mas break, bam, there goes 1 day, and possibly almost two if the last time you loged on the previous day was in the morning.
Doing the math, and considering the tournies I am already in, and the fact I do not really own my own computer with Internet. I had to say NO to X-Mas grand, despite it being my speed, and had to refuse all game challenges. I don't know how ppl like Trackhead can enter all the X-Mas grands and STILL improve his rating like haywire, although the round 1 matchups seem kinda tedious, I'm 1600 rated and I'm the top rater in all my pools in every round 1 tourney but one, in which I might win or at least tie anyways. Maybe that's just luck, I suspect once all my random tournies reach round 2 I'll be literally SCHOOLED.