Minimal number of games played to be allowed to join a tournament

Dear Chess.com,

Actually this minimum is not advertised in the tournament pages. I used to have a chess.com account a couple of year ago, now payed for a diamond membership to be able to play tournaments, just to discover that most of them won't allow me for not having played enough games.

All tournaments I pressed enter today didn't allow me, one required 10, another 144 and another 20. I feel like a fool for having payed for an account if I can't benefit from it, since I can play online chess games outside tournaments with a free account too..

Those rules are set by tournament directors, not Chess.com. Many members like them because they exclude new/ slow players who often gum up tournaments.

Many tournaments have other requirements too- about average response time/ move and timeout percentage.

Chess.com runs its own tournaments but most tournaments are started by members. You should ask the TD's involved.

This is explained on the Help pages- https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444863-who-is-allowed-to-join-a-tournament-

You will understand these rules and probably agree with them once you have more...experience.

I know the rules, I've been a paying member a couple of years ago. But the main point is that if someone pays for a premium account, in general you can assume that that will not be players who mess up the tournaments. So the rules are perfectly fine for free members, not for paying ones.

The others filters I can totally agree upon, those are completely under my control. But honestly if I quickly want to join tournaments the best thing to do (and I saw it as a recommendation before) is to start many simultaneous games and resign them on move 6. So that definitely shows how silly this exclusion principle is, it can be circumvented by bad sportsmanship, which I do not want to do.

And there are 0 chess.com tournaments opened up currently so that doesn't help either. :)

You weren't trying to join this one, we you?

https://www.chess.com/tournament/the-tournament-that-will-never-start

The organizer writes:

I really never expect this tournament to ever start. Why? Because it is a no vacation tournament. You need a time/move of less than 3 hours. You need to have completed 500 games on chess.com. You can have a max timeout of 1%. Also you have to be a premium member. So if you are able to sign up for this tournament that's great! But you might be waiting a LONG time for it to start.

For some reason the Official tourneys aren't showing up as early as they used to. Probably related to some work being done for v3.

Certainly there are at least a few out there you qualify for?

The current top tournament: In Memory of Game six 1972 Reykjavik Fischer - Spassky

You need 255 games to participate... sigh...

Can you take my suggestion into account: make sure it's viewable before you click join tournament. Now you can only know after having clicked 'participate'

I agree that they should be required to list all requirements on the tournament listing.

Plus I think that one has a prearranged starting position for all the games. The first 3 moves of Game Six from the 1972 Fischer Spassky match.

At any rate, that one is full already.

Why it hasn't started already isn't clear.

I could be wrong but that error message looks like it may be a catch-all one and there probably isn't a 255 game requirement. 

The real error is that registration is full.

255 may indeed be the minimum number of games required for that tournament.

Came across this when looking for the answers:

https://www.chess.com/blog/CaptainPike/how-to-create-tournaments

It shows that the TD is allowed to set the number of required games to whatever number is desired. 

He has also made a video on what tournament directors can and cannot do.

I set up the tournament In Memory of Game six 1972, with 255 game minimum, 10% max timeout, min rating 1300, and used All Players speed setting, Vacaction allowed and no auto start.  There are three players I will not allow to be in my tournaments because they are too slow or they have previously thrown games to reduce their handicaps to enter tournaments set up specifically for weaker skill levels.  Another problem I have experienced as a TD was when a batch of new accounts was set up and all joined a tournement I set up, so I dont use the minimum 5 games default from chess.com but a higher number to eliminate new accounts.  The thresh-hold increases when computer versus computer cases are possible.  In this particular match I was entering a max games parameter to left of the minimum default 5, I entered 25 and ended up with 255, and chose to leave it that way.  I think you can enter 999 if you like.

 The reason it had not started was it was not auto start, it did not have a start time.  I have just checked the registration list in the last 30 minutes, and removed a player for having a rating way below the minimum 1300, so now as soon as one more player registers we can begin.

I was  very hopeful today, passed the 10 game threshold, tried to join the Tal Memorial which looks like a cool tournament and guess what: minimum 25 games played.

To the Staff: If you think about it you are ruining your own premium model. I ordered a diamond account and suddenly realized that at this rate it could take a long time before reaching 10 tournaments, since I generally will not qualify to enter any tournament in the first 2-3 months anyway. Downgraded to gold now.

There may be some ideas to do a better initial rating estimation. I have no problem providing my fide rating, or the online chess rating could be estimated (only for tournaments) based on how blitz and online chess ratings differ in general. I remember that the differences are quite stable for most people. Anyways, don't know if there's a good solution, just know that it s***s for the time being, it'll be over in a couple of months but I do think some people might not be as patient as I am though.

Maybe a valid idea would be for the staff to run a newcomers tournament every month for example, only accessible for people who have joined in that month? I would definitely join that one ;).

Again, the tournament restrictions you are complaining about are member created. That is one of the benefits of being a premium member. You can create a tournament with any number of restrictions. Whether or not the restrictions will keep you from getting enough participants is the only limiting factor.

Other than pointing out the staff that tournament listings should mandate specifying all such restrictions, there is no point in complaining to the staff.

There are usually a number of chess.com official tournaments available. Why they are not available now is not clear.

You're obviously right, it's up to them to act upon it. I am only explaining to staff what made me downgrade, since probably I am not the only one and all of us wants chess.com to do well..

The Official Chess.com tourneys have fewer requirements. They just need to fix it so registration shows up far enough in advance like they used to.

maybe you could play a bunch of 30 sec games to pass the# of games required quickly.