Is the matchmaking in the arena elo based? It seems like the #1 finisher and #2 finisher of round 1 never matched each other, and their elo difference is pretty high
2025 Chess.com Spell Chess Championship: Official Discussion Thread
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The link is for bughouse chess not spell.
The pairings system is broken. None of the strong players are getting anywhere near the highest score because we keep getting paired against each other and don't get paired against the beginners in the lead with the most games.
Wind wrote:
LongTermFuture wrote:
Can Chess.com add a commentator to he commentator team who has played Spell Chess and has a rating of at least 2000? I heard Dina and Canty will be commentating, but they both have ratings <1500, which will render their commentary predictably irrelevant.
There's often special guests with a variant knowledge graal.
If I don't qualify, I'll happily join the commentary team to provide analysis.
The IM who won the first qualifier made it to the finals last year and is/was rated 2100 (with a different account). How is it fair to let them play with a 1500 account to get paired against other low rated players? Other titled players have been banned for sandbagging to try to exploit the pairing system in this tournament; I feel like the IM's performance in the first qualifier shouldn't count for the same reason. My second place performance was clearly much more impressive. https://www.chess.com/variants/spell-chess/arena/39291
I never got paired against the #1 player or anyone else who was ranked higher than me throughout the tournament.
Yeah I have nothing against the player; my frustration is with chess.com's pairing system. Hopefully they'll fix the pairing system, but if not, then they need to do something about people who win based on having a low starting rating, because it's a completely unfair advantage that clearly made all the difference here.
It will be nice to have some comments from chess.com about the pairing algorithm they are using. It looks like higher ranking players with higher probability play with each other, which gives significant advantage to lower ranking players for two reasons:
1. It is harder to win against a strong player
2. The games of strong players are usually longer, so high ranked players are not able to play the similar number of games as lower ranked players.
Oh
Good
Aug 15, 2025
0
#36
The schedule links seem to go to an old bughouse tournament. Am I missing something?
how
@Wind
SUPERMAN-ELNUR написал:
[removed, please don't quote spam -- MS]
you spammer litlle kid
and not superman
How to join
There's a big green button in the OP, "Join the Qualifiers!", you can go there starting tomorrow at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST which is the first qualifier. You can find all qualifiers within the schedule page which is where the button takes you.