Just like other contests (any style of fighting), you should have to make weight in baduk.
It is annoying as hell to fight through a Swiss McMahon tournament for DDK players to take fifth place because three of the five are SDK.
In Olympic matches, for example, you have to make weight before each fight. If you do not make weight, you are disqualified.
I know these tournaments are correspondence but I think if rank ranges are enforced as a criteria for disqualification, it will create less segregated tournaments. You’ll see divisions like eight Kyu to 12 Kyu instead of SDK and DDK divisions.
It is neither unfair nor unfriendly to tell tournament participants that they will be disqualified if they leave the range from gaining or losing strength out of it.
If you lose strength out of the tournament, you have stuff to work on. Try again later.
If you gain strength out of the tournament, congratulations. Good luck at the higher levels. Maybe disqualifying yourself from a tournament because you gain strength can be a profile badge.
Disqualification would happen based on rank at the conclusion their tournament round. There could be a situation where they rank out of the tournament the lose a couple of games to other participants and end up back in range.
Interesting idea. In addition to your idea, how about expanding the range (both upper and lower limits) by one rank for each round played so far? When the tournament begins, they should obviously be within the rank range. After the Nth round, allow players who fall outside of the original range by at most N ranks to continue. Players who exceed the expanded range will be informed that they can’t continue because their range has changed too much since the beginning of the tournament.
What I’m saying is this: it’s strange to kick someone out of a tournament just because they were on the edge of the permissible range of ranks to begin with; I mean, why let them into the tournament to begin with if there’s a reasonable probability that they might get disqualified? Giving them some leeway as the tournament continues over an extended period of time seems reasonable to me.
That would also force tournament directors to pay attention to how many rounds they will potentially have… I’m not sure if a geometric progression is wise. On a 12 round tournament, someone could theoretically become a shodan and win a DDK tournament.
Luckily, one game doesn’t usually increase one rank.
I think setting a range upfront would be a better course of action. If you drop or gain two stones at the edges of the range, for example, you’re out.
I was looking over the tournament director tools and I can do this now if I tell people upfront before the tournament begins. Like timeout disqualification, I think it would be better to have this automated so people don’t take it personally.
I doubt we will have situations like high school wrestling where people get “playing disorders” to keep their qualification. There are dozens of tournaments and anybody can craft one to give themselves a sort of home-field advantage that they won’t disqualify from it.
I’m currently in a tournament for beginners that is almost finished. When the tournament started started I was 21k. Even without the the mass system adjustment, my rank would probably exceed the 20k limit. The thing is that for the majority of the tournament, I was legitimately a high double digit kyu. Should I now be disqualified just because my rank has improved despite the fact that I mostly earned those victories while my skill was in the same ball park as everyone else?
The fact that correspondence games can take so long means that players’ ranks are going to change - sometimes a lot. To reject all the time and effort that they put into that tournament thus far invalidates the experience. And if someone was on track to win, it also denies them the accomplishment of finishing as a winner.
A “You Got Better” badge doesn’t cut it. I already know I got better - my rank has increased. Everyone’s rank gets better over time; not everyone wins a tournament.
I don’t mind if you tell people up front that they’ll be disqualified for exceeding a strict range, but it shouldn’t be default behaviour.
As for 12 round tournaments… most tournaments seem to be 5 rounds or less. If there really were a 12 round tournament, I think the tournament director should expect lots of rank increases beyond the limit. If there weren’t many players to begin with, someone might even end up winning by virtue of not being disqualified.
I agree you need to make the weight to fight. But once in the ring you fight till it ends. You should not get disqualified for improving. Everyone in the tourney has the opportunity to study and practice. (and sadly easily cheat in this technologically advanced world) That some have more time or improve faster or have better resources is just the drawback of a correspondence game. If one does not like that one should just play live tourneys or live games. I do not believe we should punish improvement, rather we should aim for excellence.
Let’s say a player improves a lot during a tournament and is close to reach the upper limit. Since he got so much better, he is of course on top of the tournament. Earning a “Congrats on your improvement” badge is nothing compared to winning this tournament. So he has two choices to avoid being dropped:
Make sure he doesn’t finish and win any other game out of the tournament, This means all his other games will drag on, with one move per day.
Lose other games on purpose to stay under the limit, that’s sandbagging for you.
On top of it, this would exclude fast improving players from many tournaments. Let’s imagine 2 categories for a tournament: DDK and SDK. After a month (which is not so much for correspondence) a player enrolled on DDK tournament turns 9k. This player is just dumped twice: he couldn’t participate on the SDK because he was not strong enough at the begginning, and he is dropped from the DDK because he got too strong …
I think this should be an option for the tournament organiser. It’s not a bad idea, though maybe hard to balance in practice - especially at the high-kyu level, where people’s rank can change rapidly.
I just finished a tournament for people 20k and weaker (I think I joined it at 24k-ish) at 11k. So I think guishu is definitely onto something.
