Ha, ha ... having tt fun over Thanksgiving with your family sounds pretty drastic (I've stayed in the US for a while : ) and risky ... even in the perspective of this Bronze medal for x category ; ) Still I agree it can be planned around vacations. Usually women secretly love guys with passions ... ; )
I guess what helps you to decide to participate in the tournament is your ranking system, like in most of those tournaments you can gain points - right? In Poland the system is district based so to be ranked higher first you need to be good at your local tournaments. If you are no good than there's no reason for you to go to the other part of the country other than pure fun.
And I agree tt is a very social game ...
It does sound drastic, especially to a non-TT player, since Thanksgiving is such a family-centric holiday here, perhaps even more so than Christmas. And yet it's the most popular tournament in the US...
I'm not sure folks play these large tournaments because of rating points (and yes, your rating is on the line at every sanctioned USATT tournament) - in fact there is an argument that some people stop playing after they reached a rating milestone in order to preserve it
. But, I guess one under-appreciated aspect of nationwide rating system is that it enables more or less fair competition in any tournament: I can go from Boston to pretty much anywhere and my ~1750 rating will seed me appropriately for competition in Chicago, DC, Seattle or Silicon Valley (OK, may be not there
, too many 500-rated little loop monsters). I know I should not/can't play U1500, will be competitive in U1800 and have no chance whatsoever in U2300, but why not, while I'm there...
And I guess it makes tournament organizer's life easier too, since they can offer something for everyone, from true beginner to a best player in the country/region, so it's a win-win. An interesting question, though - what happens if TT becomes more popular in the US - would current format survive? At some point you can't have US Open as a 'festival' anymore - so will they have to do qualification stages, limit # of participants, just like they do in golf US Open? Good problem to have, I'm sure, from USATT perspective.