Been hitting a blitz wall at 1500 for a few months now. Finally punched through and got blitz and bullet both above 1500 at the same time! Just wanted to share my achievement since most of my friends/family can't appreciate/understand it :)
I am a 24M and had never played in a tournament before (played casually with friends a few times a month for several years) this past weekend. One of the events I played in was a combined 4.5 and 4.0 mens singles event. I went 2-2 and did not move past the round-robin. I beat a 4.0 and a 4.1 and lost to a 4.5 and a 4.7. I ended up with a 3.97 DUPR by the end for singles based off those 4 games.
I want to play in another tournament now in a few weeks, and it is a JOOLA Virginia Spring Classic Golden Ticket tournament. The advice I got from one of my 5.0 friends in the community was to play as low as my DUPR allows given the amount of sandbaggers for Golden ticket tournaments.
Is 3.5 mens singles too low to enter as a 3.97? It let me sign up and I am technically allowed to given my DUPR but I feel like I am better than that (perhaps I am wrong) and I don't want people getting mad at me on tournament day. Additionally, I don't care about the whole golden ticket thing at all so if I won gold I would be wasting that spot that someone else could have one.
I could register for 4.0 singles instead, but I am worried that if the sandbagging is true, I might be playing with a majority of basically 4.5 level which I do not think I am at yet.
Additionally, I do have a 3.9 doubles DUPR and will also be playing in 3.5 mixed and 3.5 mens doubles, but I feel a lot better about those given I am significantly better than my partners.