In almost all real-life tournaments, the event has a category that specifies how strong the players in it are. Unfortunately, it hasn't been implemented in online tournaments for some reason.
There are a number of benefits for categorizing tournaments by rating:
1 - Often, there are plenty of beginners that like to find someone their own strength; if they use the current system, they quickly get destroyed in the tournament and feel terrible after being placed near last place and losing many games.
2 - Stronger players are often bored having to beat much lower players since it feels too easy and there is no competition. We've all seen what happens to chessbrahs: he gets so bored that he berserks every game, giving time and material odds, and occasionally asks his fans to give him a "challenge" (weird openings, etc). The bigger the gap between players, the more "trollness" there will be.
3 - By creating classes in tournaments, a player can get a relative view of where he/she stands relative to other players of similar rating. Consider a 1900 rated player playing a random tournament and end up in 12'th place, for example, with top standings being all 2200+ players. This number 12 will not mean much since the variance in the field is too high. Now if the same player was playing in a 1800-2000 event and ended up 3rd place, they will feel better about themselves and not get completely obliterated by stronger players.
For these reasons and more, I'd suggest creating rating classes for tournaments. For example, there can be beginner tournaments (rated 1600 and below), intermediate (rated 1600 - 1900), advanced (rated 1900 - 2200), expert (rated 2200+), and of course, open tournaments (all ratings).
Thanks for taking this idea into consideration. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
There are a number of benefits for categorizing tournaments by rating:
1 - Often, there are plenty of beginners that like to find someone their own strength; if they use the current system, they quickly get destroyed in the tournament and feel terrible after being placed near last place and losing many games.
2 - Stronger players are often bored having to beat much lower players since it feels too easy and there is no competition. We've all seen what happens to chessbrahs: he gets so bored that he berserks every game, giving time and material odds, and occasionally asks his fans to give him a "challenge" (weird openings, etc). The bigger the gap between players, the more "trollness" there will be.
3 - By creating classes in tournaments, a player can get a relative view of where he/she stands relative to other players of similar rating. Consider a 1900 rated player playing a random tournament and end up in 12'th place, for example, with top standings being all 2200+ players. This number 12 will not mean much since the variance in the field is too high. Now if the same player was playing in a 1800-2000 event and ended up 3rd place, they will feel better about themselves and not get completely obliterated by stronger players.
For these reasons and more, I'd suggest creating rating classes for tournaments. For example, there can be beginner tournaments (rated 1600 and below), intermediate (rated 1600 - 1900), advanced (rated 1900 - 2200), expert (rated 2200+), and of course, open tournaments (all ratings).
Thanks for taking this idea into consideration. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.