Yeah it is late at night and I should be asleep but I just had this idea and had to think it through. I’m blaming Mark Nibbelin because he got me to thinking about the value of ratings etc … It seemed that for the most part they were needed for class prizes so that the majority of chess players would feel as if they would have something to play for. Which got me to thinking of how you could run a tournament without ratings. So anyway I came up with the following.
Tournament that does not use ratings to base pairings and prizes. Pairings
are random within score groups. In a 4 round tournament there is an overall
1st place prize - a prize for the top finisher of all those with a score of
<.5 after round 1. a prize for the top finisher of all those with a score
of <.5 after round 2. a prize for the top finisher of all those with a
score of <.5 after round 3.
Example 32 players after round 1 only players that have scores of <.5 are
eligble for the Alpha prize. After round 2 Only players that have scores of
<.5 are eligble for the Beta prize and after round 3 only players that have
scores of <.5 are eligble for the Gamma prize.
This has the results of distributing prizes like classes prizes to the
weaker players without relying on ratings to determine classes. Results are
what determine the prizes.
I did an experimental run of 32 players for 4 rounds and manually randomized
the players within their score groups. I didn’t score any draws just for
simplicity sake and I let the higher rated player always win. The results
had a tie for 1st with the two highest rated players. One of them played
opponents 9,8,5,7 and other played opponents 25,3,4,6
The Alpha prize would have gone to players number 9 and 10
The Beta prize would have gone to player number 22
The Gamma prize would have gone to players 29 and 30
Now someone tell me “Oh yeah we’ve done that” 