I am not sure the Chapel Hill tournament this year is indicative of ftf tournaments generally in the US It's a World Dip Con tournament--the stakes are higher. There were quite a few participants from Europe and that means a substantial investment in money and time, raising the stakes involved. Someone coming over from Europe for 5 days or so, and spending a grand, isn't likely to do so to play a few games for "fun". They came to win. And just the collection of a lot of good players makes everyone want to do well. Also, the reason the scoring scoring system had a tendency to get on people's nerves is that there was no time limit on games, so anyone can veto a draw and drag the game on and on. People get tired and cranky (and on the second round you could actually prevent other players from playing in the 3rd round in the evening by not agreeing to the draw and having the game extend past the start time for the 3rd round). Those two factors--higher than normal stakes involved and an ill-advised no time limit on the games--combined to fray tempers at times.