too many tournaments , not enough participants

I think there are too many tournaments causing available participants to be spread too thin between them resulting in longer wait times for tournaments to start.   

Why not have regular scheduled chess.com tournaments (ie. by rating, time/move, "no vacation", etc.) and disallow custom tournaments which duplicate them?

Another suggestion is to automatically delete tournaments which are not fully subscribed by the scheduled start time.  This might also help reduce the number of bogus tournaments.

Fair idea.... just wonder how many of the premium members would fancy having their entitlement reduced in this way? 

Well, another solution would be to allow non premium members to play in a few more tournaments...... *holds thumbs*

I hope premium members would realize it's in all our interest to increase the number of tournaments that actually do start per week.  Why make every potential tournament player suffer unnecessary delays just so other individuals get the dubious benefit of being a tournament director?   If that's the current calculus it's very wrong (in my opinion).

I thought everyone could play in tournaments they are qualified for (ie. rating, etc.)  whether they are premium or not.  really?

Only one non-official tournament at a time for non-payers.

Non premium members are limited to one tournament only.

ahh..OK  sure, let non-paying members play in more tournaments AND limit the number of tournaments - increasing that number ONLY when actual usage warrants (ie. keep a "wait list" or whatever and track it).

Is there any good reason why we would not want to maximize the number of tournaments that start per week?

already mentioned this prob in aug in the erics wishlist. My solution is at a time theres limited number of tournaments lets say 20 other get on a time list, and when one tournament starts, first on that list begin

To allow nonpaying members the same privleges as paying members undercuts the financial foundation of the site (thus ensuring its demise) so I don't think Chess.com should go there.  Having a date by which a tournament must be filled or removed is a great idea.  I've quit signing up for or even looking at non official tournaments because it is such a mess.  How many pages of pending tournaments are there now 10, 15, 30?

Well, we want to minimize the waiting time for people who want to play in tournaments. On the other hand, there are many meaningless tournaments in the list that don't get participants and should never start. So yeah, start tournaments, but _good_ ones (that enough people are actually interested in).

Personally I don't understand why non-paying members are allowed to start tournaments.

I think the answer is to make tournaments more like game seek where participants ask for the kind of tournament they want and tournaments automatically start when enough other people ask for the same type.  If you limit the number of types of possible tournaments then they would fill faster.  Does this make sense?

An injection of reality:

There are 97 pages of "Current Tournaments" with 25 tournaments to a page, so that's 2425 tournaments running as we speak.... not too bad for a failing system, wouldn't you say?

maybe we should all start a few dozen more tournaments and get it up to a respectable 10,000 ? 

The issue is the number of pages of upcoming tournaments.

For example, how many 7(1)->1 open format tournaments at one move per three days does anyone need?

http://www.chess.com/tournament/master2

http://www.chess.com/tournament/all-can-join

http://www.chess.com/tournament/drpepper

http://www.chess.com/tournament/17-noir---bragging-rights---tourney

http://www.chess.com/tournament/chess-and-anagrams

http://www.chess.com/tournament/nigel

http://www.chess.com/tournament/bradley-open

http://www.chess.com/tournament/abcde

http://www.chess.com/tournament/best-of-luck

By decreasing the number of upcoming tournaments they would fill more quickly then there could be more than 97 pages of current tournaments.