Qualifier Arenas are flawed.

Just qualified in the 6th W4PCC Qualifier Arena.  Joined halfway through the arena; played c9 Kb9, f12 Kf13, or l6 Km6 in all of them and still went 3/4; enough to qualify.  My games weren't won with any particular exceptional skill either, mostly people resigning.  I'll link the games below if you want to judge for yourself how low-skill they are.  

Game 1: https://www.chess.com/variants/old-standard/game/27296176/94/3 

Game 2: https://www.chess.com/variants/old-standard/game/27296414/174/4 

Game 3: https://www.chess.com/variants/old-standard/game/27296661/164/3 

Game 4: https://www.chess.com/variants/old-standard/game/27297032/199/2 

There are multiple problems with the arena format as a qualifying method.  Since arenas  allow you to play as many games as possible within the allotted time frame, they fuel gameplay and arena strategies which attempt to balance time (in the arena) with winning.  I've had multiple games, in both this arena and previous arenas, where players will resign prematurely in order to get out of a game.  They do this is in positions where they might be varying levels of inferior to another player because they are making a calculated decision that their chance of winning isn't worth the time they would have to expend to do so.  You also get players attacking someone relentlessly in the hopes that nets them a quick win, whilst ignoring other players.  It ultimately doesn't matter how correct, good, or successful these strategies are, but the fact that they exist and are quite prevalent highlights issues with the arena system.  After all, we are talking about qualifiers to the championship, so you should expect a format which promotes high level play, right? Listing the arenas as casual also promotes the sense of each game being unimportant.  Players can resign or have suboptimal play (see above) because there is no consequence for doing so.  While making it rated might not necessarily completely solve the issue, it would provide a deterrent to avoid those sorts of gameplay. 

Another issue is the disparity in skill level.  A good player who gets into games with relatively unskilled players can patch together multiple quicker wins than a group of great players who are stuck in a long game with each other.  Making the cap 2200+ can only do so much to curb the problem. The streak system only exacerbates the issue, allowing that player to create an insurmountable lead.  With pairings being random, it's no wonder players regard winning an arena as coming down mostly to luck.  Random pairings and skill disparity is a flaw systemic to arena systems, but how Solo games are played makes the issue much larger than in teams, for example.  In teams arenas, arenas can still be won by someone stringing together large numbers of wins versus inferior competition, but games in teams are much quicker, and there is no element of chance in teams (you can't get screwed over by a player making one bad decision at the end of a long game in the 3pc stage).  However, Solo games take much longer, especially as the skill level rises.  This makes that random pairing system much more of an issue, since you don't have chances to play many games.  

You could make some changes to the arena system to try to fix these issues.  You could make the arena longer to allow players in longer games more time to catch up.  You could remove the streak scoring system.  You could further raise the minimum rating level.  But ultimately, the arena system itself seems incompatible with Competitive Solo games, and I would love to see a different format chosen altogether.

I'm hurt there wasn't a caveat saying Radon got obliterated by their idiocy.

That is 100% true and correct. Thank you for expressing MUCH BETTER THAN ME what I was saying yesterday and earlier today in https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/that-was-not-fair, and that Neo and myself predicted already 2 months ago when Luke announced the event, but nobody listened.

It's clear that the previous system was much more complicated for the organisers to deal with, that's why they prefer Arenas. But it is also clear that the Arena format IS NOT FAIR, does NOT allow the best players to be qualified as they should be, makes people feel frustrated as they feel that quite often the result depended on simple luck. The duration is simply not enough, especially with the streak bonus system. And yes the disparity of levels creates a lot of unfairness.

(BUT I could imagine for instance a bullet championship qualifiers with 3 hours and 1 I 2 games. In THIS case yes you have time to recover).

c9 Kb9, f12 Kf13, or l6 Km6 in the next round, if it aint broke dont fix it

I wish I hadn't read this lol. Congrats

1|2 Bullet 😒

Congrats for winning LazyImp! GL in Championship! 

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/a-proposal-for-2023-championship

The only solution I can come up with is (with using what we have) just making every arena last two rounds therefore the luck% will be reduced like Qualifier #1 Round 1 and Qualifier #1 Round 2, the results will be summed up and the winner is the one with the most points counting both Round 1 and Round 2. So instead approx. 4 games we'll have approx. 8 games with matchup (shuffled) player pool or should I say mixed, because it's not likely that in both rounds we'll have the same player cycle or should I say not the same players who click next game fast. Solo is about luck anyway, we can't reduce it to 0. I mean, you want 2500+ but that's not the solution for this simply because the games will be even harder and last much longer. 2200+ is not lower rated, it's just the way qualifiers are. We can't make such restrictions because it's qualifiers. Anyone who's great at the game should have a chance imo. Because you would not survive that long playing the same moves in teams, it doesn't mean if you do just that here that the skill level of this year's Solo worlds is low. It just means that everyone is focused on themselves and try their best to win. I don't see that this year's worlds differ that much from the previous ones. I really don't.