Starting today, HorseTourneys debuts a new tourney format whereby players can compete solely against opponents who have a similar level of experience as they do. Here’s how it works.

We’ve analyzed activity data among all of our account holders over the past 12 months and assigned each player into one of five levels. Level 1 is the group that has the lowest average entry-fee volume during the past year. Level one competitors tend to play for smaller stakes and/or play just a small number of events over the course of a year.

Those in Level 2 have a higher annual entry-fee volume than those in Level 1. Level 3 players are those whose volume of play exceeds that of people in Level 2…and so on…all the way up to our final, “elite” level, Level 5.

Today, we have begun running special tourneys—primarily head-to-head and winner-take-all events—that are restricted to players within a certain level. You can find out your level simply by logging into HorseTourneys and going to your “My Account” page.

By logging into your HorseTourneys account and going to your account page, you can find your level right next to the words “My Account”.

From there, you can compete in these special, restricted tourneys by finding a contest restricted to your assigned level and then purchasing an entry just as you normally would. If you mistakenly try to enter a tourney that you are not eligible for, there’s no need to worry. Our system will stop you from registering (or paying for) that particular tournament. So you don’t have to be concerned about possibly entering an improper tourney—we have your back on that.

Here’s a look at some of today’s (Friday’s) tourneys restricted to those in Level 3…and some limited to those in levels 3 through 5.

Of course, our player highlighted higher up on the page, Chad Cross, is a level 1 player. So he would undoubtedly prefer to focus on the below events today:

As noted earlier, our player-level ratings are determined solely by volume of play. We tested several algorithms for creating a fair and equitable rating system, and the more we tested, the more we believed that, in this case, less is more. We wanted something totally objective—and something that could be revised as often as we wish. (We plan to revise level-ratings roughly every six months.) The more complicated we made it, the more open things seemed to be to interpretation, and that’s not what we were after. So we decided that entry-fee volume would be the sole determinant for our ratings. Reasonable minds may differ, but we hope you find our methodology—simple as it is—to be a fair one.

We hope you enjoy these new tourneys…and we hope you give us feedback as you play them to let us know if we can make them better for you and for all of us—because player levels notwithstanding, we believe we’re all in this together.