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BGonline.org Forums
Masters events - What???
Posted By: Henrik Bukkjaer In Response To: Masters events - What??? (Daniel Murphy)
Date: Saturday, 28 December 2013, at 3:25 p.m.
The maturity of the ELO system, and the coverage of the same, is vital for making these kind of decisions.
In DBgF, all active tournament players are known and placed approx. correct in the system. Even the inactive ones. So when new players appear, they are either truly "new", or they have been playing outside of Denmark and are known strong players. The latter doesn't sandbag into beginner events, they most certainly choose between the top-2 flights. Sometimes people comes from outside Denmark that are not too experienced, such as spouses to players entering the Nordic Open championship event (where the spouse may enter beginner or intermediate). Again it makes sense to start these new foreign players at a level determined by the event they enter.
And the true "new" players (Danes) that play a DBgF rated match for the first time, are NOT stong players - we know this due to the big coverage and maturity of our rating system, so it will make sense to start them out below average, and even with a minor positive acceleration in the first matches (NOT the FIBS kind, that simply generates more noise than what is good, and even may fling players to a very low rating to simply fade out and leave them with a long road ahead getting back to their true level - because new players improve a lot in the beginning).
I have no idea if the same situations could apply to USBgF, but my feelings are that you really miss the membership and registrations of all the less experienced players only playing very local events. You need to get all of these players and events registered, to get things on the right track.
In the DBgF membership is now free, and your matches are rated when you play small local weeklies and mini jackpots. Only "real tournaments" and team leagues requires a purchased license (which runs at about $8 per tournament, and 1 year valid after 4 tournaments = $32/year).
Due to automated rating systems and voluntary help entering manually run events, this is possible. And that setup ensures the success of the ranking system.
Ken Larsen often argue, that a good ranking system (World rankings, or at least ABT rankings) would draw more players to these events. It might be true, but I think you (in general - the majority of the people trying to improve things in the US) are looking at this too much top-down. You should be looking at it buttom-up instead. ABT is probably good enough, ELO rankings and master-points for this level is probably good enough. Instead focus on the lower levels, how to get them included. How to get the masses registered and ranked. THEN you'll see the effect of people playing more to improve their rankings, etc. That will generate the buzz you need, and that will improve the feeding chain for your ABT events. It's more fun to be ranked #100 on a list with 4000 entrants, than one with 400. And you'd be amazed at how eager and motivated low-level players will be, to get past different thresholds and milestones on a big list (going to top-1000, top-500, top-100, past certain absolute rating marks, etc.).
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