1800+ always get the shaft!

how come most banded tourneys have the top end at 1800+?...this puts us at an extreme disadvantage when 2000+ players enter

My rating right now is approaching 1400. When I encounter someone with a rating approaching 1600, I do not start getting my excuses in order by thinking it's actually a mis-match. I am thinking to myself, " Come on with it, bully. You can't beat me." I start each and every game fully expecting to win, and should it become apparant that I will not win, I start looking for ways to salvage the draw. My initial reaction to losing is one of surprise. To anyone. If I ever get my game sufficiently up to speed to acquire a rating in excess of 1800, I would not be intimidated by someone with a rating in excess of 2000. I'm not intimidated by them now. 🙂 When my rating starts to approach 1800, that person with the 2000 rating will be viewed as a stepping stone. 🙂

Originally posted by Djinc
My rating right now is approaching 1400. When I encounter someone with a rating approaching 1600, I do not start getting my excuses in order by thinking it's actually a mis-match. I am thinking to myself, " Come on with it, bully. You can't beat me." I start each and every game fully expecting to win, and should it become apparant that I will not win, I start ...[text shortened]... s to approach 1800, that person with the 2000 rating will be viewed as a stepping stone. 🙂

Yeah, but it wouldn't be nice to win tournaments once in a while?

That's kind of my whole point. If you get to 1800, don't pick that as a place to just kick back. Do your homework and get better. Your rating will go up a lot more quickly by beating 2000+ players than it will by beating 1500- players. Crying about being paired with stronger players will not improve your chances of beating them. Never discount the value of having the stronger will to win, and always remember that a good loser is a consistant loser. 🙂 You should be polite and gracious when defeat is thrust upon you, but if ones inner response is to start making excuses to yourself about how it was unfair, or the tourny was rigged from the start, or the sun was shining in your eyes, then losing will become a lifestyle. If you get comfortable with losing, losing will return the favor. 🙂

Originally posted by Djinc
If you get comfortable with losing, losing will return the favor. 🙂

Totally happy with it.

Awaiting my soon-to-be fourth tournament win, though...

Originally posted by Aiko
Totally happy with it.

Awaiting my soon-to-be fourth tournament win, though...

If you are perfectly happy with losing, that tells me that an 1800+ rating is not anywhere on the horizon for you. 🙂 I, too, am involved in a couple of touraments, but, they are both banded, and my rating at the time of entry was artificially deflated by my having had internet service knocked out for over a month by hurricane Ike while having a whole bunch of games going. I had only recently found this site and had completed very few games, and then got a timed-out on a bunch of games that I would have won. It would have taken an act of God to keep me from beating them. But, fortunately for them, that is exactly what they got. Divine intervention.🙂 I am confident that I will win both of these touraments, and the wins will mean nothing, because it's a tournament against people that, in a fair and just situation, my rating would drop for beating them, because I shouldn't even be playing them in a tournament in the first place. The point of that is this. A tournament win, in and of itself, is pretty meaningless if you are playing people with less than a top shelf game. Competing against higher ranked players is an opportunity to excel, not a reason complain. 🙂

This all probably sounds a lot harsher than I intend for it to. I'm really not at that level of intensity, it's just that I don't complain about getting beat by the best. I watch how they did it, go do my homework, and come back at them. 🙂

you learn more in close games than you do getting your arse kicked...and I don't find too many 1800 rated players that have "kicked back"

User 222465 is a good example of such a player: he has won a huge number of tournaments but never really gets much higher rated then 1800.

Originally posted by Briscoe
you learn more in close games than you do getting your arse kicked...and I don't find too many 1800 rated players that have "kicked back"

That's an interesting way to look at it. For me, when someone really kicks me to sleep in a hurry, that means that there is a fundemental principle of the game that has escaped my notice entirely up until then. I bring my queen out on move #3. I get my queen taken away from on move #8, or am so tangled up from trying to avoid losing my queen for a bishop that I can't possibly win. This is a very valuable lesson. My opponent employs the sicilian defense, has total control of d5 and comes pouring through the c file and pushes me off of the board. Another valuable lesson. Leave the queen back for a while. Fight tooth and claw for control of d5. Don't have my rooks bulkheaded behind my own pawns. I have the bishop, my opponent has the knight, open up the board. I learned what conditions are favorable for each piece by having someone pound me with that piece. I came to appreciate the value of a healthy pawn chain by having someone decimate mine. 🙂 I learn a lot more by getting dragged through fire, because less extreme examples of the same principles are what make for an end game that is less than favorable. It's always 'back to basics'. Maybe I didn't lose my queen, , but I did fall behind by two moves. It's the same principle. I neglected development in favor of a premature, flimsy assault. But, different folks learn in different ways. 🙂

Originally posted by Djinc
That's an interesting way to look at it. For me, when someone really kicks me to sleep in a hurry, that means that there is a fundemental principle of the game that has escaped my notice entirely up until then. I bring my queen out on move #3. I get my queen taken away from on move #8, or am so tangled up from trying to avoid losing my queen for a bishop that ...[text shortened]... n favor of a premature, flimsy assault. But, different folks learn in different ways. 🙂

It gets a bit harder to stop dropping your queen when you get over 1600.

Originally posted by randolph
It gets a bit harder to stop dropping your queen when you get over 1600.

I have no problem with losing my queen, I have a game going as we speak in which I lost my queen. Of course, I got both of his rooks, a bishop and a pawn for it, but I did lose my queen. 🙂

However, once you get rated a little higher, you will realize that there is a much bigger gap between 1800 and 2000 than between 1400 and 1600. To get to 1600, you pretty much just have to aviod blunders. Don't fall into any forks, skewers or pins, and you will get to 1600 quite easily. I found this to be true with personal experience.

It gets even worse - the gap between 2000 and 2200 is huge. I often find 1800s give me quite a tough game and it can be a struggle to win against them, but when I play 2200s I almost always get wiped out convincingly without ever really having much of a chance.

Originally posted by Tyrannosauruschex
It gets even worse - the gap between 2000 and 2200 is huge. I often find 1800s give me quite a tough game and it can be a struggle to win against them, but when I play 2200s I almost always get wiped out convincingly without ever really having much of a chance.

Clearly, you are an excellent player. You say that, in games with 2200+ players, you feel as if you were never really in the game in a competive way. If you don't mind my asking, do see it slipping away, and understand how this is being done to you, as in, "My opponent is doing X-Y-Z in a more effective manner than I am" or is it that you seem to just sort of get pushed off of the back side of the board without really having a full grasp on how that was accomplished?
I hope you don't mind my asking you this, but, to me, this seems like a golden opportunity for me to ask some questions of a top shelf player, and shamelessly ask you to take me to school. 🙂

Originally posted by Tyrannosauruschex
It gets even worse - the gap between 2000 and 2200 is huge. I often find 1800s give me quite a tough game and it can be a struggle to win against them, but when I play 2200s I almost always get wiped out convincingly without ever really having much of a chance.

I think it´s a matter of perspective. I think the gap between 1,400 and 1,600 is the same as the gap between 2,000 and 2,200. The difference is that when you are playing a 1,600 the severity of the mistakes they make against you is such that there is no effective difference between them and a 1,400 - you´re still going to win most of the time, The real difference with the 2,000 - 2,200 gap for you is that at 2,000 you are playing players about as good as you and it´s going to be difficult. At 2,200 you are playing against people who are significantly better and they are going to give you real problems.

I get the same feeling about players who are at 1,800 (my peak rating was 1900 but I think 1800 is more representative) and players who are at 2,000.

On the general point, I think the problem is that because there are fewer 2,000+ players these tournaments are hard to fill. With the mini-banded ones I think there is a case for 1800 - 1900, 1900 - 2000, and maybe 2000 - 2100, with a single group for 2100+ as there aren´t so many of those players.

It´s not all doom and gloom, I thought I had no chance of winning this one: Tournament 1136 but my opponent in the first round was banned for being an engine so I got a bye to round 2, my opponent in round 2 dropped out of the site for a while (I was losing) so I went through to round 3. In the final jimster was the favourite until he was banned so in the end ´all´ I had to do was beat rookwhar (who isn´t exactly a push-over at 1,750ish but not as scary as jimster on 2,200).

Until you´ve won one I can understand it being slightly frustrating. On the other hand if you are an 1,800 and manage to beat a field with people significantly stronger than you (I didn´t - I beat one player who is about the same as me) there´s more satisfaction.