I am very grateful for this tournament. It has been a lot of fun and the games I have played in the heat of competition have been rewarding. Thanks to all those in charge and those who have offered money as motivators.
With that said, and with nothing here that follows to negate anything that preceded it, I had some ideas to throw out there. I know that there had been a lot of talk about tournaments for everyone that could possibly include handicaps and other issues and I never really had anything to add until now. I don't mind the idea of opening up these tournaments to give everyone a chance to win some money, but this change should have been paired with a division layout. In Chess tournaments there will be an under 1200 division, a 1200 to 1400 division, etc, based on people's rating. Once I won 50 bucks because I beat everyone in the under 1200 because at the time I was only ranked about 1180 or something like that. This is what really gives everyone a chance to win money because once you opened up the tournament to the absolute best then you are not only giving them the opportunity to win money, you are essentially going to give them money more so over others, especially without a division layout for prize eligibility. Another aspect of this basically requires the player to maintain a pace that is a challenge for them as opposed for a 1.16M player to put up a simple million game to win most of the money. I asked Dean once how many attempts it would take him to get a million, and he said that if he was only aiming for a million that he could do it in about 3 or 4 attempts. Consider that Dan offered $50 to the first million point game on the pretense that the quality of player was limited but then when the rules changed, do you expect for him to take back his offer? Dean can get over a million any day he wants to and I am sure this is not what Dan had in mind when he posted the price. Also, the extension of hours of a tournament, or any rule changes after a tournament has already started, should not offer any advantage or disadvantage to the players. We all had to face Twitch issues, we all knew when the tournament began although postponed. Some people will not be able to play today such as myself to have the opportunity to increase their scores, offering an advantage to those who are able to keep trying. I suppose any move can be controversial but these two issues could have, at least I think, been done differently. Such as 1) if you are opening up the prizes to all, then establish some kind of division layout for them, and 2) if you are going to extend the length of a tournament then it should have been announced at the time of postponement so that all of us had an equal amount of time to prepare and accommodate for the extension.
