My first official ITST tour match & suggestions + help

[PO]

Hello everyone,

I finally played my first official ITST tour match yesterday and I gotta say I enjoyed it very much even tough I was totally crushed by this great player, Isaldor.

Well as a beginner, the first thing I saw was that I mostly lack this movement + quality returns these great/better players have on court as it was almost impossible for me to hit a winner all through the match. He was like all over my shots, anticipating them easily and turning defense into attack most of the time. To give an insight about my capabilities, I can easily beat CPU incredible 1 (I don't know if this is good or not enough ) and I have been playing the game since 5-6 months may be 2-3 hours a week.

I know keep playing on/offline is the only way of improving my abilities but I find it difficult to find players with similar skills when I go for online. Whether there are very good players with +2000 ELO who do not want to play with me or just the way around.

So my questions/suggestions,
1. Do you guys think this ITST channel is a good place to find players for online practising? I figured that people are generally using it to meet right before their scheduled tournament match. No conversations, nothing.
2. Is there a bunch of people who want to improve themselves practising around so we can meet maybe at peak hours to enjoy this great game while improving ourselves?
3. I think that there are several players who want to be a part of this "great players" but the system lacks something. (not critisizing anything, just thinking that it will be much more fun if there are more players with similar skills competing on the tour)
4. Maybe an additional scoring system other than ELO can be added into the game or on our profiles in the forum to provide players a healthier idea about our skills.

Thanks for those who took time to read, contribute and help in advance.

[djarvik]

1. ITST chat is the best place (after playing actual tournaments) to find sparing partners. IF you come often enough you will spot the guys that come on at the same time with you and by offering them a set you will develop playing relationships. It is a process, not instantaneous. And the Chat is alive actually, not always but it is....sometimes it could be a lot of fun, you just need to get to know the "regulars" and their personality - then you will have fun.

2. See (1) for response. Chat is your best bet. Just come in regularly and you will find plenty of people to play with, including myself. (similar to your level)

3. You mistaken, EVERY PLAYER wants to be a great player, not just some. The system in place closely mimicking the "real world" where you have players of different skill-sets compete. You have the Futures, Challangers, Pro....you have the off-line training, you have friendly sparring. So the system is realistic. Not sure what you mean exactly, if you want to elaborate a bit more - I will be happy to answer.

4. What is wrong with ELO+Ranking? That actually tells you a lot about the player. ELO might not be perfect but it is a damn good indicator of ones skill. Combined with Ranking (providing the player played for some time here) - you can pretty much know exactly what to expect. I don't see what other "scoring system" you are proposing? ....examples?

[PO]

First of all thank you for all these answers and for your time. I totally agree with all those things you've pointed out. Maybe I didn't put my thoughts clear enough.

3. What I meant when I wrote "some players", I was referring to the ones who really wants to develop those relationships you mentioned over ITST chat. Because I come accross a lot of players who do not get into any conversations during a 30 min. play time. I am not saying they have to, but would be great if they do. I think most of the users do not use chat both in game and the web version. Maybe there can be rooms in web-chat grouping as "futures", "challengers" etc. or "master 1-5","master 5-10" etc. and maybe we can do something to attract all the online players to come use the chat and benefit more. If you ask me how, my answer will be "I have no clue at the moment. ".

4. I didn't say that anything is wrong with ELO system. Actually it is great. But like I mentioned on my previous post, people with higher ELO than me generally do not play with me. Of course there are exceptions. My ELO is something around 1100s and people around 1600s and over generally do not wish to play. So once again I don't have any idea to solve this right now but, if we can improve the use of the web-chat system, I think this problem will be solved once and forever.

Thank you again Djarvik. I hope this time it is more clear .

[C4iLL]

Indeed, the chat has always been the center of the ITST tennis elbow world since the first tournament in 2012 where there was only 8 founder members/participants.

You can find a lot of people willing to play with guys at even 400 ELO, but it's mostly in the evening I think.
I don't think there is discrimination based on ELO on the chat : Didine has lost more matches than the top 10 combinated perhaps and I don't think he struggles to find opponent 

But there is a large discrimination toward people who like Nadal, are american, or think WTA is skilled, that's for sure