Restrict entry to banded tournies

I like the bandied tournies. I like to play against the group of people around my skill level, and I'm glad that there is now a "tournament entry rating".

However, because the tourny entry rating never drops more than a hundred points, it seems to mean that you can get people entering a higher band than their current rating if they have recently experienced a big drop in rating for some reason (eg lots of timeouts or just a trough in performance).

I know that people go up and down in ratings, heck, my own graph is a load of hills and valleys. However, I think it makes a banded tourny a bit ridiculous when you have someone entering whose current rating is much lower than the banding.

I suggest that if your current rating is, say, more than +- 150 points away from your tourny entry rating, you should not be allowed to enter banded tournies until after the two ratings come in to line.

I do not think that this should extend to unbanded tournies, because you enter those in full knowledge that you could play your games against an apponent with any rating, low or high. But banded tournies should be just that.

In a perfect world banded tourneys would work because nobody in his right mind would want to enter a tourney rated 1200-1250 when he knew his real rating was 1500 - all he'd achieve is an award for winning a beginner-grade tournament, and where's the kudos in that?

Unfortunately, not everybody sees it that way - "king of the kids" is still a title of leadership, even if said with tongue firmly in cheek.

Perhaps a solution to this perennial problem could be found in broad grading/bandings; allocate players to "novice" "average" "strong" or "professional" groups with identifying colours/motifs/icons, then allow for other contestants to object to anyone not wearing the appropriate level group identifier if they consider him unfair competition. Limit the number of objections per player and leave the door open for the target player to appeal.

On second thoughts, this sounds too complicated - any other ideas?

No, mrmist's complaint is the other way round - that an apparently weak player with a current 1200 rating is allowed to enter a 1500 banded tournament if his "tournament entry rating" is still high enough from a previous peak.

I don't see much problem with that. If the player achieved a 1500-ish rating sometime in the last three months, he should be a worthy opponent for the other tournament entrants even if his current rating is low.

I may have misinterpreted mrmist's post - I was thinking of people who achieve a temporarily low rating purely to enter lowrated tournaments (sandbaggers). Personally I wouldn't mind getting the occasional weak opponent in a tourney - a bit of stress relief! 🙂

Sorry it is not the easiest thing for me to explain clearly.

Essentially I am bothered by people whose rating is currently much lower than their actual skill entering banded tournies. It's not so much of an issue with the higher rated ones as the new tourny rating value seems to have mostly sorted that out.

Originally posted by MissOleum
I may have misinterpreted mrmist's post - I was thinking of people who achieve a temporarily low rating purely to enter lowrated tournaments (sandbaggers). Personally I wouldn't mind getting the occasional weak opponent in a tourney - a bit of stress relief! 🙂

No you are mostly correct. Although I am not particularly concerned with how the rating got to be lower than it should.