Why is under 1800s allowed to play in the Open in OTB tournaments?

Why are under 1800s allowed to play in the Open catagory?

Should only above 1800s be allowed to play in the open?

I am about to play in a tournament and i'll be playing in the Open catagory as my rating is above 1800 however there are some players who are allowed to play in the open and their rating is 0 yes you heard me correctly their rating is 0 and they are allowed to play in the Open? does anyone else think that this is a joke? what is the point of calling it the A grade if people with 0 rating can enter? I hope some of the top players in the tournament lose to the 0 rated players and see them rage against the tournament director for letting people with 0 enter the A grade lol :D

what do you guys think? is it fail or is it legit? :P

thats why its open man

Can you link to some/one of these with 0 rating?

You get paired with players around you, so basically rating at first then according to points. I don't think there is a real need to separate players, the restricted ones is mostly to encourage more lower rated players to play tournaments.

#3 @flugsio

See the title, it's about OTB tournaments, not lichess tournaments. :P

I don't really see the problem.

Sections with a rating cap weren't introduced to keep the low rated players away from the high rated players, on the contrary. Their purpose is to give them the opportunity to compete for prizes against players of their own rating range.

Keeping the open section free of low rated players never was the idea and why would you want to deny them the opportunity to play in a strong competition if they want to?

Maybe you're doing a norm tournament with only titled players or you have limited room so you prioritize higher rated players, but other than that I don't see the point.

@DST001 All tournaments have "play up" options where players who are rated within 100 points of rating floor to get into the higher section for a small extra payment. So assuming the next section is U1900, players who are rated 1800 and above can play up to the open section. If next section is U1800, players rated 1700 and above can play up to the open section.

Open section is usually very tough. It contains many 2600+ rated players. So the 1800's players who play up usually get very similar results to head to head record that I have against you in hyper bullet chess.

In OTB I always play up to the 2000-U2100 section.