tourney etiquette, ceiling?

Somehow I get a bit off when I see this kinda stuff happen.

http://www.redhotpawn.com/gameanalysis/boardhistory.php?gameid=496180

I know its possible for a guy to join a 1300 rank tourney before he's over 1300, but seriously, I question the fairness in this particular arrangement.

Somehow there ought to be a rating ceiling for players joining rookie tourneys, otherwise this kinda stuff will ruin the chances of meeting evenly matched players.

I bare no grudges against Richardt, but I do question his fairness.

Cheers,

Flixotide

Sure it sucks, and I can understand your annoyance. The admins have tried to get round this with tournaments being based on 30 day highest raiting which does reduce the issue where people may have "accidently" droped a few hundred raiting points in the vain hope of winning a tournament for lower ranked players.

At least you are not going to lose loads of raiting points, it is far worse when you get thrased by a player with a 1000 rating who is recovering from a 100 game time out.

But, it is very hard to draw the line. Do you base entrance on your highest ever rating? If so I have got to 1625 before, mainly through some opportunist time outs and leaving the games I was losing just to see how high I could get. There is no way I am generally at this level of play so I would not like this to be my threshold, I suppose averge over your time on RHP would be fairer, but then again, what of the players who get up to 1800 rating playing 300 games, then leave for 3 months, their rating drops to 700 after all their games are timed out and they have an average of 1200.

Maybe an average that excludes timeouts is the way forward?

Andrew