Remove sandbagers from banded tournies

The improvements in the banded tournaments with the tournament entry rating have been really great but i still feel that players should be removed from tournaments if their grade shoots up hundreds of points past the top threshhold of the band. Surely we can have a cut off of say 250 points? If a players highest grade in last 100 days is 250+ points higher than the band cut off then the player should not be allowed to advance to the next round. I can't see a problem with this. Even if they have just won their games in the last round, the second placed player should advance instead as the original player shouldn't have entered the band in the first place.

So we should be punished for improving? I would have no desire to enter a tournament I could get "kicked" out of just because I won a few games.

In the length of time it takes some of these tournaments to complete you will see some people gaining significant rating points, and from what I have seen it is not in every single tournament, just a few here and there. The first tournament I joined was a banded duel back in April when I first joined the site and it is still in the first round. I have finished 940 games since the start of that tournament, and gained probably 300 or so rating points.

Who is to say you couldn't beat the higher rated player anyways? It's just a number. I beat a 1400 player and lost to a 900 player in the same day.

This would be somewhat reasonable if tournaments lasted a week. Considering they last months and months on end, the current system is fine.

There are exceptions where people have left the site and had their rating drop for such a long time they essentially were sandbagging it, but I think that's the exception rather than the rule.

Originally posted by jp4995
So we should be punished for improving? I would have no desire to enter a tournament I could get "kicked" out of just because I won a few games.

I don't see it as a punishment - I mean, surely these "suddenly improved rating players" don't wish to be winners of lowly [to them] tournaments anyway - that would be a bit pathetic.
So, even though it doesn't concern me at this time, I reckon it is a good suggestion.

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I don't see it as a punishment - I mean, surely these "suddenly improved rating players" don't wish to be winners of lowly [to them] tournaments anyway - that would be a bit pathetic.
So, even though it doesn't concern me at this time, I reckon it is a good suggestion.

Are they "suddenly" improved? I doubt it.

In any case, the others in the tournament have exactly the same possibility of improvement as everyone else in that tournament.

It is a punishment in a sense. You have the possibility of winning a tournament taken away from you for no other reason than over months of playing you have improved.

Oh for pity sake! The only people who will be affected by this will be people who are new to the site and haven't completed enough games to enter their true band. I see so many 2200 players in 12-1400 banded tournies. Why do you want to leave them there on the seriously narrow possibility that a 1400 player will improve to be a 1651 player in a year or so...

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
Oh for pity sake! The only people who will be affected by this will be people who are new to the site and haven't completed enough games to enter their true band. I see so many 2200 players in 12-1400 banded tournies. Why do you want to leave them there on the seriously narrow possibility that a 1400 player will improve to be a 1651 player in a year or so...

Why do you want to kick them out of a tournament for doing nothing wrong?

You are implying malicious intent where there isn't necessarily any evidence of it.

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
The improvements in the banded tournaments with the tournament entry rating have been really great but i still feel that players should be removed from tournaments if their grade shoots up hundreds of points past the top threshhold of the band. Surely we can have a cut off of say 250 points? If a players highest grade in last 100 days is 250+ points high ...[text shortened]... uld advance instead as the original player shouldn't have entered the band in the first place.

Why boot them? Just prevent them from entering in the first place.

This is still the best solution I've seen.
http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=46202&page=2#post_828738

D

I actually expect / hope that the recent tourny entry criteria changes will make this sort of thing less frequent.

I don't think it's really fair though to kick people out in later stages of a tourny. For example, I'm currently in round six of a banded tourny that started almost two years ago - it would be ridiculously unfair to expect people to remain in their bands for that length of time.

A case in point!

User 261696

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
A case in point!

User 261696

That's ridiculous.😠😲🙄

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
A case in point!

User 261696

At what point did he drop his rating just to join a tournament and win it?

He's such a horrible person for joining a lot of tournaments and winning. HANG HIM!

If he was a better chess player than as I think it was DragonFire who said it in a prior thread, he should have the ethics to not join those tournaments.

This definitely looks like the exception, not the rule. One person who has simply entered a lot of tournaments when he was low rated and ended up winning them doesn't mean we should kick people out of tournaments for no other reason than their rating increasing over a period of months and even years.

Part of my problem with this suggestion is that it encourages people to keep their rating down if they want to win a tournament. If I was rated 1350 and joined a banded tournament from 1300-1400, why shouldn't I resign a game if I get to 1394 just so I have a chance at winning a tournament I was playing in for a year?

This suggestion provides an incentive to artificially keep your rating in your band and I don't think it's a good idea to provide an incentive to resign games just to be in a tournament there's no reason you should be kicked out of.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
At what point did he drop his rating just to join a tournament and win it?

He's such a horrible person for joining a lot of tournaments and winning. HANG HIM!

If he was a better chess player than as I think it was DragonFire who said it in a prior thread, he should have the ethics to not join those tournaments.

This definitely looks like the e to resign games just to be in a tournament there's no reason you should be kicked out of.

Dude, playing devils advocate is all well and good, but hundreds of people have entered those tourneys. There is a loop hole in the rules that allows a new starter to enter loads of banded tournaments at levels WAY below their true strength. It only takes one player like this to enter each banded tourney and hey presto! No one ever wins a tournament while being with in the bands. What is the point of banding the tournaments if we're not going to enforce the band? Not removing these players completely invalidates the whole concept of banded tourneys, surely that's obvious?

EDIT: Tournament 1350 This sort of thing needs to be stopped. It's just ridiculous!

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
The improvements in the banded tournaments with the tournament entry rating have been really great but i still feel that players should be removed from tournaments if their grade shoots up hundreds of points past the top threshhold of the band. Surely we can have a cut off of say 250 points? If a players highest grade in last 100 days is 250+ points high ...[text shortened]... uld advance instead as the original player shouldn't have entered the band in the first place.

I like this suggestion. It rewards players who can maintain the proper level of mediocrity.

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
Dude, playing devils advocate is all well and good, but hundreds of people have entered those tourneys. There is a loop hole in the rules that allows a new starter to enter loads of banded tournaments at levels WAY below their true strength. It only takes one player like this to enter each banded tourney and hey presto! No one ever wins a tournament whi ...[text shortened]... vious?

EDIT: Tournament 1350 This sort of thing needs to be stopped. It's just ridiculous!

I'm not playing devil's advocate. I quite honestly think this idea isn't fair to some honest people.

If you have two people, let's say A and B. Both start the site at the same time, but B is an experienced player and A is just some kid who has a fair bit of potential and isn't so experienced.

They both start out and play a bunch of banded tournaments from say, 1200-1400.

Throughout the year that the first couple rounds goes through both have risend to say approx. 1800 rank.

For both this is possible.

I agree that say, B, who is very experienced, is being unethical and shouldn't be able to win the tournament - this is the person you think is ALL the people in this kind of situation.

A, however, did nothing unethical. Yet, under your proposal, he'd be kicked out of a tournament for doing nothing wrong. At all points his rating was his "real rating" since he(or she of course) had been learning the whole time.

I have no problem with you finding a true way to identify A, but as long as it doesn't punish the honest B.

Part of the problem is that there is NO way of RHP discovering someone's "true" strength.

Enforcing the band means enforcing the entry of the band, not the rating throughout the games. Surely it is NOT obvious that preventing someone from winning a tournament simply because of over the over a year that a tournament goes on they actually got better!

I'm not doubting that there are people who have entered tournaments that they knew they were better than when they entered and if you can actually provide a legitimate and logical way of identifying them versus someone who actually honestly improved their rating by learning then let's hear it.