No tournaments available unless you have a rating of over 1875. Not so good

Originally posted by johneb
No tournaments available unless you have a rating of over 1875. Not so good

there are loads of tournaments now - many thanks. Good idea about joining a club but I will think about it

Why are not there open Octet tournaments any more ? 8 is the right number of ever changing opponents, Ad

What's usually available in the public list is a few open tourneys and lots of narrow-banded tourneys, but only if you have a rating at least 1250. The thousands of duffers (I'm a charter member) below that number have to check the site within an hour or two of the tourneys being created, otherwise we miss out.

I'd much rather see bands 50 or 100 wide, that way people wouldn't always be playing the same few opponents. And a 0-1000 to give the little guys a chance to improve. 0-1150 is way too wide.

Club tourneys don't help, they're usually the same opponents over and over, unless you're in a huge club and willing to play open tournaments.

Originally posted by Ad Parnassum
Why are not there open Octet tournaments any more ? 8 is the right number of ever changing opponents, Ad

Those narrow tournament bands are exaggerated indeed.

And there's a lack of open formats. Octets, 9*3, 16*4,... bring it back pls

I asked for open octets. Why are they suddenly cancelled ? For ever ?

So a whole big bunch of public tournaments appeared, and this bottom-feeder missed out yet again. And of course, no octets.

The trouble with club tourneys is that you get the same dozen opponents over and over, just as you do in clan challenges. Public octets are the best way to find new opponents around your own playing level, but they're rarely on offer and magically disappear within an hour or two.

Six more days, still no public tourneys for bottom-feeders. 🙁

Having finally managed to grab one of those scarce 0-1150 tourneys, I've been thinking about a better way to do the tourney thing.

At present tourneys seem to appear almost randomly, the mix of ratings and time controls has no apparent logic to it and there's either a feast or a famine. If I check my home page the available tournaments are too fast, too slow or too open. And it's no use looking at club tourneys because the same half dozen opponents enter every one.

We, the subscribers who play in the tourneys, should be able to go to the tournament page and readily find a couple of tournaments available to us. Here are my suggestions.

Establish a number of "series" tournaments. Example:
open 3/7 quartets
open 1/0 duels
open 7/7 threesomes
rate-limited 1/7 octets
rate-limited 3/7 octets
Then set these into some automated process, so that 24 hours after one fills an identical new tournament opens.

Less work for the tournament creators, less complaining from the customer base. And still possible to create "specials" individually, such as the annual championship.

What do others think about this?

Originally posted by Kewpie
Having finally managed to grab one of those scarce 0-1150 tourneys, I've been thinking about a better way to do the tourney thing.

At present tourneys seem to appear almost randomly, the mix of ratings and time controls has no apparent logic to it and there's either a feast or a famine. If I check my home page the available tournaments are too fast, too ...[text shortened]... te "specials" individually, such as the annual championship.

What do others think about this?

I have no trouble finding tournaments to join, there seems to always be a few open tournaments every time I look.

Not enough octets available if you have 1600 plus ! I am always too late within 1 day

There are usually enough if you belong in a rating band which doesn't have a lot of subscribers in it. Trouble is, if you're with the herd (as I am, and apparently you are too) they just don't appear often enough.

The big advantage of octets is that you have a set number of games allocated to you, just once, and you usually get some unfamiliar opponents which make things more interesting. Duels and the like can drag on for years, people leave the site or their ratings change dramatically, which can make games very lopsided. And the next round always seems to appear when you're on holidays or busy with other things...