Originally posted by venda
There's a few problems with banded tournaments.
A couple are sandbagging -where players deliberately lose games to lower their current rating which enables them to enter lower banded tournaments and "match up" to unsuspecting players in clan games if the other leaders aren't careful, but the problem with what you are saying is that narrower banded tournaments are difficult to fill and so never get started.
Hi venda,
It's to be expected that as the rating band rises there will be less players with that tournament entry rating, so it's a fair point you make that they will become more difficult to fill.
My solution to this would be to simply widen the bands at the top end.
For example: I've just clicked on the available tournaments page and the Banded Threesomes goes up in 50 point increments, 1300-1350, 1350-1400 up to 1650-1700, but then it suddenly goes 1700+, which means that it effectively becomes 1700-2500, a rating band of 800 points, not 50.
As you say it will become harder to fill as we reach these higher ratings, but instead of the next band being 1700-1750, why couldn't it be 1700-1800?
And then maybe 1800-2000, then 2000+.
My guess is that it would take no longer for a 1700-1800 tournament to fill than it would for a 1650-1700 tournament as the entry rating is doubled.
There's no reason I can see for the rigidity of all the bands being exactly 50 points up to a certain point where it jumps to an 800 point gap.
If there are less players with those ratings, just widen the bands.
And of course what I propose applies also to lower rated tournaments.
At the time of writing this the 0-1300 tournament has 17 out of 18 entrants, far more than any of the others.
It suggests that there shouldn't be a problem filling, for example, a 1200-1300 tournament, and a 1000-1200 tournament.
As it is at the moment there will probably be just as many mismatches in the 0-1300 as there will be in the 1700+.