Players with ratings far in excess of maximum tournament range

I have noticed that various online daily tournaments with a maximum rating of < 1000 have many players who exceed this number by at least 350 points.

For me this completely takes the fun out of the competitions as they clearly have too great a skill to be playing in the beginner range.

What do people think?

yeah, but if you play those higher rateds you will get a lot of experience

Agreed - but it makes the <1000 tournaments really hard for people <1000 rating to win - which I think is the whole point - so that people of a similar rating can play together.

Lindsay - I agree with your rationale. Also, there are different tournaments for all levels of play. Certainly 1300 ranked players can find plenty of tournaments in their range of play. Why do they keep picking on us beginners??

I think that they are automatically eliminated from the tournament if their rating is too high for the tournament in question .

No, they can't join the tourney if their rating is too high but players can gain rating during the tourney and don't get kicked. Some tournament directors will manage events and do it manually but it isn't the way the site works it.

That is one reason some events have a minimum number of games to play them. That way most players should have pretty stable ratings.

Yes Martin that is how it seems to work - some of the players have some very "suspicious" ratings though as I even saw one player playing in an under 800 tournament with a rating of 1350 - thats a pretty impressive improvement.  I'm not suggesting kicking people who become rated over the 1000 as that isn't fair, but maybe a 15 percent tolerance might keep things fair. thoughts?

Yeah, I was thinking the same about players entering the tournament with their rating under 1000 but as they finish games their rating goes over 1000. I guess requiring a minimum # of games is a good idea. 

Deshi73 yes thats true - I think a reasonable increase is only fair but some players seem to be doing something where their rating has increased by 300 or 400 points or so. That seems odd to me

sandbagging just to feel special

Absolutely

I think they get kicked out when the tournament starts.

@mark stop advertising my guy

as for a solution, I think there could be two rating requirements. One to join the tourney, and one you have to keep your rating under to not get kicked out. The second one could be private as to prevent sandbagging

For the lower rating ranges in US Chess play it is quite conceivable for a player with a stable rating (40+ games) to gain more than 200 points from a single four-round tournament, particularly if it is a tournament section with a rating limit (k-factor of 50, four wins, average 30 points per win, apply the bonus of doubling every point over a certain level - call it 32 - and you are looking at a 208 point gain for beating people only slightly higher rated).  With tournament eligibility generally based on the official monthly supplement that means that a stable but active player could gain 400 or more points in a single month.  A 4-0 result is unusual for a specific pre-designated player but it is extremely likely that somebody in the section will have that result.  Those rating gains may be due to sandbagging, or improving active players, or just the odds happening to come down in somebody's favor this time.

I've seen players do well in a tournament after the creation of the next month's supplement and then win a rating-limited section with a supplement rating below the limit and a live rating above the limit (and do it by going 4-0 with three of the opponents also having live ratings above the limit).  Seeing as Chess.com uses the live ratings (apparently at least at the time of tournament start) they don't have people with live ratings higher than the limit entering, but with something as long as a daily game event there is a virtually guarantee that some players will rise above the limit (and some of those players may float around going above and below the limit during the course of the event.  If daily games get rated as they finish then it become very difficult for a person winning an event to avoid exceeding the initial limit at some time during the event.