I’d be surprised if there were any explanation for these “tournaments” other than, “Hey, here’s a new guy, he’s a strong player, but he has no rating – let’s work the system to get him one as fast as possible.”
I’ve alerted Walter Brown, the Ratings Committee chair and Bill Goichberg (RC Liaison) to these events, since this could involve both a change in the ratings formula and a revision to the Board’s match rules.
There may be some administrative changes we can make, such as requiring an office review of any event with more than 2 players and more than 10 games in which one player is in more than 75% of the games before it can be submitted for rating.
I also ran a check of the above criteria dating back to 2006. It found a number of events, including quite a few we were already aware of from one TD. Looking at a number of the events from other TDs, there may be valid explanations for several of them. Interestingly enough, nearly all of them involve quick ratings. Some were dual rated and only a couple of them were regular-rated only.
I suspect any organized intellectual sport, regardless if its chess, go, scrabble, or some other endevor, the participants will parse the tournament announcement if they’re close to the cutoff (whatever that may be), in order to play in the advertized tournament.
In professional baseball, quite a few players parsed the “no performance enhancing substances” rules to mean “if you can’t detect it, and Jose Canseco doesn’t write a book telling everyone, then I can do it.”
Considering the section of the one torunament is, “Amber,” and the next is, “Porter,” I might expect the third eventually to be section, “Lager.” 
And thanks again, John, for the explanations above.
Walter Brown believes that those two events are real, though they also do appear to circumvent the rule prohibiting players without an established rating from playing matches.
Discussions about what to do about similar types of events in the future are continuing.
I disagree. The wording is very clear. It may not be what was intended, but the meaning of that language is perfectly clear.
Players are eligible if, and only if, they have a rating greater than 1800 published in the November Supplement. This is an objective fact that any outside observer can easily verify, either way.
Since it does not mention Regular vs. Quick, it must not matter.
Since it does not mention Established vs. Provisional, it must not matter.
Enforced? By whom? It’s a condition laid out by the Organizer. If the Organizer chooses to violate the condition, nothing will happen until and unless some person files a complaint. It would be nice if the person filing the complaint actually suffered some identifiable damage.
Thanks all for your input. It was most helpful to be able to pass along.
Let him play. I don’t see the problem. If he has a 2100(P12), he is obviously good enough to play in a >1800 tournament.
What is the real concern here? That he wins, and someone complains.
Why try to be so silly about this, it is supposed to be fun, not a chemistry science experiment or running a nuclear power plant. Play more chess.
In the first place, it’s far from obvious that he’s “good enough” – a Quick Chess rating based on a few games means almost nothing. In the second place, rules should apply to everyone equally. Why not let an 1801 player enter an Under 1800 section? After all, he almost qualifies. If players can’t trust the rules, they won’t trust you, and they’ll take their business to another organizer whose word is good.
Considering how he got his 2100 rating, it is anything but obvious that he’s 1800+ strength.
Bill Smythe
Is this primarily because the provisional formula is flawed?
No. It’s because the whole situation is inherently suspicious.
If one could become convinced that the results actually occurred as reported, and the games were “real” (both players were actually playing to win), then it might be reasonable to assume the player is 1800+ strength.
Bill Smythe
No, it’s primarily because it is easy for a determined TD to get around the match rules. If you look at the crosstables cited above, you’ll see that the player in question played every game in his first two tournaments. The software isn’t sophisticated enough to call things like this suspicious.
Alex Relyea
I think we can probably detect situations like this as a way to get around the match rules (requiring an office override), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others.