In the comments for the 8th Tournament, 1401-1600 group, a guy named dedmoroz made an excellent suggestion.  Perhaps it has been discussed before, but I don't know.  His idea is that the next round of the tournament could (and I think should) start as soon as all the winners of the groups have been determined from a mathematical perspective, i.e. as soon as no one else in the group could beat them even if they won all their games.  (I assume we would also want to wait for the winners to finish all of their games, so they don't end up with even more than 10 games for a single tournament.)

I want to also add that you could even calculate winners by tiebreak in advance (at least in certain situations).  For example, in my group I have 8/10 and there's a guy with 6/10 and 2 games left, but even if he wins both he'll have a lower tiebreak score, so my group is still mathematically determined despite the simple analysis of a possible tie.

So has this idea been discussed and considered by the Chess.com people?  It would make tournaments go MUCH faster and make everyone happier, I think.  (I wish we could make a poll to vote on it.)

There is nothing new under the sun - see speeding-up-multi-round-tournaments.

What would happen if the uncatchable leaders closed their accounts or were found to be cheating - before all the games in the round were completed?

how-to-speed-up-tournaments---help

Thanks, artfizz.  I didn't really bother to search... guess it would've saved me some typing time

and deprived the rest of us of a little nostalgia?

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.....

Yeah, it's so crowded that nobody goes there anymore.

It's déjà vu all over again.

Maybe this wouldn't help as much as I suspected.  Looking at the tournament I'm in, there are only 45 games left out of 5460 (0.8%), and probably only half of the remaining groups could be decided by calculation.  It still might be possible to save a few weeks, though... I'll try to take notice.