shouldn't there be some mechanism, to stop high rated players from dropping points just to enter a low level tournament.

Who on earth would do that?

Or better, have some sort of rule based on your highest rating stat.

People's ratings tend to jump around a lot when they are new, though. Maybe after x number of games are played, rule based on highest rating stat?

thats right,budboomer.thats right.

introduce rating floor on chess.com that will make it impossible.

a 2000 player doesn't forget to play chess if he is suddenly rated 1600.
like in Karate a black belt having to face a yellow belt.

there you go,the perfect answer,now what???

Nothing, I guess.

There are plenty of people with 1800-2200 ratings who are playing a bunch of games and who let them lapse (power outage, vacation in no-vacation events, in a coma for 5 days...) and they drop 300 points.

In our computer-run system, there is no Tournament Director to look up each person and say, "you used to be 2208, so we're going to put you at a floor rating and you won't be playing against some kid who's 1400..."

If you're making a suggestion to the folks who run this site and make changes to the programming, you can do that. Otherwise, it's just like yelling down an empty street.

However, your opening post indicates a suspicion that people are intentionally ditching games to drop down and then fit in a tournament. That's something else entirely.

thats what i am saying,you just hit the nail on the head,

hope i dont get kicked out for rocking the boat now.

I resigned all of my games recently because i was tired with them. Now my rating's 1300.

understandable sometimes but does that justify you suddenly playing in a 1300 league? with a rating floor you would still play where you belong when you are lot tired.

Real OTB tournament organizers do this.  CCA (Goichberg, World Open promoter) in the US limits prizes to those who've lost points within two years to qualify for a class section, and they also keep records of those who have done this in the past.

But there is nothing at stake in online tournaments anyway, so what would be the point of sandbagging?

Chess.com has given us the ability to have league and groups.

Now how to use a group to fix this. We can have a list of players that have done this. We list the players name, tournament. Then list when their rank dropped and list the games that their rank dropped.

Also we have the TD of chess.com join that group as Admin and tournament players join so they can see the names of players that have done this and bring it to the attention of the TD if they missed it.

Now when the players name has repeated on the groups list we can bring it to the attaention of the staff. It be easier to have Kohai in the group also to keep it under control and have no false info posted and avoid conflicts among a member that might be accused of this.

I know several players that have done this against me. So i know where you guys are coming from. I just focused all my energy on that game between me and that opponent. I say out of 4 times they only got the best of me once and that was in the final round where i met 2 of them. Ouch is right!

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