I am a USCF registered chess player. I've played in several tournaments, and although I don't have a high rating, I have play the game, and despite any losses I take, I have fun. And all I needed to do was register.

I enjoy Chess.com. It's a great place to have a good game of chess, whether you are just learning how to move the pieces or if you are a GM. I do have a problem with it, though: The tournaments are incredibly selective. First, when you join the site, you have to play at least five correspondence games in order to join tournaments. This was incredibly annoying to me. I can see no reason why such a rule would be necessary. So, I decided to go with it, and I played my five games. I attempted for a second time to join a tournament. The message that popped up was "You must have a time-out percentage smaller than 10%." My response: Why? So, at last, I tried to create my own tournament. Apparently, I need to have a time-out percentage of less than 5%. That is what prompted this post.

I want to play in tournaments. I like playing in them, and it's fun to get first. But Chess.com makes it impossible to get that fun. And after all of the qualification processes the site makes one go through, there is the rating requirements, as well as all of the different personal qualities that the tournament hosts want. Even after my time out percentage drops (I only missed one game, by the way, the others were not my fault), there are going to be a lot of tournaments I cannot join. Why does Chess.com need all of these different requirements? And can they drop them?

Plus it's not chess.com's requirement -- the timeout % maximum setting is determined by the tournament director.

Ozzie is right, though, timing out in tournament games isn't at all fair to the players you've already beaten in that tournament and I'm not surprised that most tournament directors make use of this restriction.

Yeah I saw the requirement for 5 correspondence games too...seems like that could potentially take months to reach if you get opponents who take a few days between moves.

It has to be site promotion--nothing more. They want you to do a lot on here first  it would seem in order to enter tournaments.

I don't like that aspect of it...but I am still new to the site and I do like this place however. But I think the 5 correspondence game requirement and the time out percentage threshold (which I did not know about until I read this post) seems to be a bit odd.

But on the other hand it does tend to get the more dependable chess players into the tournaments---those serious enough to complete the prerequisites would make for better tournament entrants and avoid having ones there who really could care less about the fact they are in a tournament and not even show up for their matches.

What exactly is a timeout?

If you don't make your move within your allotted time, not only do you lose the game, but you get a "timeout".  The proportion of timeouts to the total number of games completed (including timeouts) is your timout percentage.

Another good reason for requiring at least 5 games is so a player of GM strength can't register and join a tourney for 1100-1300's and blow everybody out of the water in 20 moves.

Okay, so I understand the 5 games, but the timeout percentage? I still feel it's unnessessary, but I can't complain to every player who uses the feature. Thank you for those explanations.

Also, what about the tournament hosting requirements? I may be missing something becasue I've never been able to host a tournament, but why would I need to have a low timeout percentage for hosting?

i have one more question, why do some tournaments prohibit people such as myself with large amounts of time/move, its not that i dont move its just that i look games over, if i dont see anything i come back to them and enjoy other website features.

Because some tournaments want to be done in less than a year.

To #15:

If they want to get done quickly, then set the clock to one day.

timeout= when the timer = 0.00, you lose by time

I'm a fast player, but if another player is taking too long, I don't really care.

I just go to another game. If I were a Tournament Director (which I am. I'm currently hosting a tournament for underscores[ _ ]. ), I would set the max timeout % to say, 35%. High enough for someone who has had a few slipups to get in,