[jeffnc]

Sounds like you're doing the right things in researching this. It can be difficult to know how outlets are chained together. Rather than trying to figure out the order, just check all of them (even if you find a problem with the first). You don't have all that many to check. The backstabs, as mentioned above, are notorious and difficult to detect if bad. Even if proved working, I would still take this time to move all the wires to screws, while you're there.

 

[jeffnc]

Gfci's will trip if an overload is detected.
Happens all the time.

Are you talking about GFCI in the panel, or in an outlet?

Assuming the latter, they are not supposed to trip in an overload condition. Are you saying they often do anyway? Or, I suppose, you could come up with a scenario where an overload could overlap with a GF situation.

 

[jeffnc]

Your telling me that if I plug to many appliances in my kitchen that the gfci outlet will not trip?
Only the breaker in my box will trip?

I'm not saying that exactly. I'm saying that's the way it's supposed to work. I have seen GFCIs act funny.

I had one in my own bathroom that would trip constantly every time I turned this device off. Never did figure that one out. Now it could be sometimes that due to the vagaries of electricity, technically a GFCI is acting correctly, because there's some subtle thing going on we don't know about, and "overloading" is the most obvious thing going on. Who knows?

But grounding, circuit breaking, and GFCI all do 3 different things, and they don't all protect the way some people think. You can take a piece of metal in your left hand and a piece of metal in your right hand and stick each in a slot in an outlet, and the GFCI won't do a damn thing to stop you from getting electrocuted because it has no idea. I'm sure you know that, I'm just saying a lot of homeowners I talk to don't have the slightest idea what GFCI means, let alone how it works. Personally, if we're talking potential life and death circumstances in my home, I like to know the basics of how things work.