Why don’t we enter tournaments on the basis of European rating rather than on grade?
There are three reasons: • For a significant minority of people, their rating is misleading. It would be unfair to force those people to enter a tournament at an inappropriate rating. • It is impractical to arrange the draw on the basis of European ratings. Tournament organisers already have a complex project on their hands, and asking them to access European data for the tournament is just not feasible. • To discourage tournament directors from over-tuning the draw, possibly causing people to get the same opponents more often, rather than the variety of opponents we all want.
