Agreed -- it will cause more problems than it solves.

Perhaps we just need to reset our expectations - if you enter a 1200-1400 rating category tournament, and your chess strength is somewhere in there, and there are 1000+ people entered, you have no chance to win the tournament!

Sorry bout that.

 P-U-N ..... I believe this would work! Certainly better than the 20 game minimun now in place.

I've also seen the 'promotion method' in play at GK. It works there.

When I joined chess.com in Dec I hadnt played chess for about 8 years.In my first 6 games I won 3 and lost 3 which gave me a rating of about 1050 .After a few games I started to play better and ,as a result ,I had a few players suspiciously complaining that I was underated.

After 6 months my rating is about 1700 which is probably about right (yesterday I took an ELO rating test online and scored 1705).

The obvious solution would be to set up a 1000-1400 tourney for players who have played a minimum of 100 games

Official tournaments are meant to be inclusive. There is a 5 game minimum for basic members. Soon after tournaments were introduced this restriction was removed for premium members.

Internet lifetimes are short the current mean here is 19 games. You will find a 100 game minimum excludes more than 80% of the players who have played a game in the last 12 months. Given some of those with 100 games are not eligible due to timeouts and some have left but are still being counted as active, not many players could join.

There are roughly 65000 active members if you exclude 80% that still leaves about 13000 players,more than enough to hold a tournament

due to timeouts i have no chance to play these tournaments

The main point was that the official tournaments are meant to include everyone except players who time out.

***********************************************************

In the range 1001 to 1400 there are approximately 28,400 "active" players.

20% of that is 5,680.

Subtract from that those ineligible due to timeouts.

Subtract from that, anyone who has not played in the last 60 days, maybe even in the last 30 days?

Subtract anyone who plays less than eight games at a time.

It would be difficult enough to fill member-created tournaments of 100 players in the range 1001 to 1400 with the 100 games completed restriction. You can monitor this if you wish.

An Interesting experiment  TD,how long does it normally take to fill a 100 player tournament?

There is a huge demand for players so filling any tournament takes a long time.

They tend to fill up faster as the tournament gets closer to starting.

Some possible reasons for the ones that take a long, long, long time:

• The tournament director does not invite anyone.
  
• There are unreasonable conditions.

These 100-player tournaments are not filled today.

1st Chess Aficionados 1601-2000 there is an announcement from 2009 01 27

for fun 3 there is a comment from 2009 03

will you win: new and improved there is a comment from 2009 04

Well I was wrong. I suspect invitations are key. Along with the 1001-1400 range, I have continued the experiment with the 1401-1600 range.

I am participating in the expiriment in the 1001-1400 range, and I look forward to seeing how it all shakes out ! I tend to agree with Cobblepot that expectations should be changed. These tournaments take a while to work themselves out, especially with multiple rounds/advancements going on. In the meantime, surely the people who care about this the most can continue to start tourneys with the 100 game minimum, no ? Otherwise, I see no reason why anyone should sit still like a duck for months on end... 15 months is a significant amount of time, even over-the-board, and I see no reason why anyone should be under the Sword of Damacles when all they did was win more matches than they lost.... At any rate, good luck to all who are in the tourney, and have a nice weekend !

Round one is over in a some 100 games completed tournaments.

1001-1400, 1401-1600, 1601-1800, 2001-2200.

Round one will end whenever it ends 1801-2000.

Results indicate a over the course of a long tournament players have to improve to be successful.