tournament names

If a tournament has the name Sunshine<1400, what does that mean?

It's likely to indicate a rating maximum of 1400 (or 1399).

That's what I thought...so I'm having a hard time understanding how I got into a tournament by that name and am playing against people with ratings WELL over 1800

Ratings ranges do not apply once the tournament starts.

1st Chess.com Tournament (1001-1400)

2nd Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400)

3rd Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400)

4th Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400)

5th Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400)

6th Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400)

7th Chess.com Tournament (1201-1400)

The site does not have provisional ratings and the rating of a player with few games completed is not reliable. You will find a range limited tournament, especially with multiple rounds, will not work unless the tournament director sets a minimum number of games completed more that the default five games.

I just thought that if I got into a tournament that said <1400 it would be difficult to run into players with ratings like 1888

Not that difficult if the number of games required is low (5 games)

One can enter chess.com, play 5 games and still be under 1400. If he is a good player the rating can get to 1800 in the next 10 games easily.

That's why low rated tournaments should have a high number of finished games required, like 15 to 20 games for example. Non-masters enter here allways with 1200, no metter how good they are, so in their first games their ratings will be low.

Also, you get rating points for winning games in a tournament.

Oh...well I was feeling like I had been suckered or something,  but everybody seems to think it's normal..Who cares anyway, when your rating will sky-rocket if you win (lol) but you only lose 1 or 2 points if you lose.  Maybe the sucker will have stepped on a line or something.

In a sense you have been suckered, and it is normal for tournaments on the site, but you do not have much choice. There is at least one other tournament director who tries to reduce the problem.

In these two tournaments, http://www.chess.com/tournament/big-fast-tournament and http://www.chess.com/tournament/big-fast-tournament the TD set a minimum games played of 100. This is normally not feasible. There are too many tournaments in the Upcoming list competing for relatively too few players. Tournaments would remain unfilled until cancelled by the site.

I've started 3 tournaments. I think I set a minimum of 50 games and a max timeout of 3% or something similar. Then I try to only invite people who don't have a maximum achieved rating way above the tournament limit  or an average opponent score above their rating (which indicates somebody weird :).

I started the first tournament within 24 hours and the other 2 within a few days of putting the tournament up. The key is to invite people who are likely to enter. So I only invited people who were recently online and satisfied my criteria. It helps being able to write shell scripts though :)