Ringers at the Open and Nationals
I've had a few people email me about this problem. At every Open and Nationals most of the rating events are won by "ringers," i.e. players who are way under-rated. Most, though not all, are rapidly-improving juniors. Because of these ringers, some of the fun is taken out of competing in these tournaments. After all, when you play, say, an Under 1500 event, you expect to play players whose level is under 1500, or at least not that far over it. The reality, of course, is that to win a rating event at the Open or Nationals usually you have to play well over the rating cutoff. To have a chance of winning, you probably have to be at least 200-400 points over the rating cutoff of an event. (The lower the event, the more volatility and the more you have to be over the event's cutoff.)
I considered putting this down as one of the issues in my "Other USATT Issues" portion of my USATT Election Page and mailing. But in contrast with the other issues I did put there, there is no easy solution to this. All we can do are find "less bad" solutions. But we really do need to address this.
There are three main types of "ringers" at these tournaments. They are: