On May 27th, the New Mexico Chess Organization ran a class tournament to determine the 7 boards for the June 8th Team match with Colorado. We had requests from out of state players to participate and in a normal class tournament that would have been O.K. As a local TD who has run 5 dozen chess tournaments since 2006, I, personally, had some reservations about out of state players thinking they might skew results.
However, the Board of directors of NMCO discussed this and decided to allow out of state players but they would be restricted to prize money only and, obviously, not being a NM resident could not be part of the team if they won a section. The tournament was TD’d by another experienced capable local TD and ran smoothly and only NM residents won sections. Still, I wonder if a strong out of state player had won a section he/she would have done so by winning from a New Mexico player who otherwise may have won a place on the team. Am I wrong or right thinking that with the potential to skew results, out of state players should not have been allowed in this (or future such) special class tournament???