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Playing up -- how do we go about it?

As we've seen from many recent posts and comments, most expert players encourage newer players to play up to get good experience. However, in practice, it's difficult to do so in sectional and higher-ranked knockout events, as whether or not you can play up seems to be largely at the discretion of the director in charge.

Some directors won't allow us to play up at all. Other directors will allow us only to play in our own bracket or in the top bracket. There are a few directors who will add some number of masterpoints to our totals to allow us to play in a higher bracket below the top bracket.

Often, we won't know whether we'll be allowed to play up until it's too late to change the event, and then we're stuck playing in an event that's below the skill level we want to play in.

So the problems are twofold:

1. Brackets are determined by masterpoints, not by skill level
2. The rules as to whether one can play up are unclear and are being inconsistently applied at different tournaments.

How can we address these problems, and how does one go about getting the ACBL to change the rules so that it's fair to everyone?

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