Introducing alternative bracket tournaments!

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DrPhil

Sep 23, 2009

Interested in more tournaments like the official ones, but with some improvements / twists? Read on!

As everyone who has played a few tournaments on chess.com will realise, the differences in strength between players can be enourmous. The most interesting games usually come from people with ratings that are roughly similar. Many tournaments have rating brackets to ensure a more enjoyable competition. But these brackets only work to a point: if your rating hovers around the border, say 1600, you have a good chance to end up in the 1401-1600 tournament (I'm taking the official tournaments as a benchmark here) with easy wins over the 1400s. Or your rating might be 1602 when the tourney starts, and that 1799 makes swift work of you. Neither situation is very pleasant.

Now this problem is unsolvable at the general level (there will always be a border), but it is not for individual players. The official tournaments may have the same brackets each time (200 point intervals starting at 1000) with the same people at the border, there is no reason why we cannot have tournaments with alternative brackets. So starting October 16th, I propose to run another series of tournaments, essentially along the same lines as the official ones, but with a 100 point shift in the border. This will be repeated every 3 months as long as I can add tournaments - or longer if another platinum member helps!

The alternative brackets are:
<= 1300
1301-1500
1501-1700
1701-1900
1901-2100
> 2100

I'll also use the opportunity to implement a few changes in the settings that will not detract form the overal setup but offer some improvement (see here for background):
- the minimum number of completed games is higher.
This is to prevent people who just joined chess.com with a 1200 rating and who are strong enough to make 2000 or more, ending up in a 1301-1500 tournament. The actual number depends on the bracket: <=1300 = 30 games; 1301-1500 = 30 games; all other brackets 20 games. See here and here for some comments about that on official tournaments.
- the maximum number of timeouts is 3%.
Often, at least one group member times out on several games now. Official tournaments have timeout ratios in the 20-30% range, I'm hoping for something a lot lower.
- group size is 5.
(so only 8 simultaneous games instead of 10, making it easier for people who have a limited number of games they can play well)

All are welcome, each tournament can support 100 members. And even if you were never bothered by the brackets, you're still more than welcome to join, just for the fun of chess!