Going….Going……Gone !

A club game recently paid 2.63 master-points for a 4 table game, albeit some kind of club “championship” or club “appreciation” or other “special” game. The average master-point holding of the 14 players who didn’t win was 723 and the winning pair had an average  of 5,512 master-points apiece. Aside from the issue of selling master-points, there is a “quality of field” issue here that should be addressed. It occurs as well in  tournaments where winning “A” players receive large master-point awards for supposedly beating their peers, when in fact they play very few of their peers and a lot of “X” players who are forced to “play up” because of the stratification limits, and are nothing but cannon fodder for the “A” players. Maybe tournament attendance would stop falling if the 5000+ players had their own section (it would be very small), the 2500-4999 players had their own section(s), and so on for the “B” and “C” players. Then base the master-point awards on the number of tables in each section. Maybe the “C” level would have the most tables and get the biggest master-point award. Am I hearing the shrieks of anguish already, crying “But you can’t give the larger master-point award to the lowest level players!” ? Oh yeah….I forgot…..master-points are sacred.