It's a frequent occurrence to have smurf accounts clog up the limited spots in the promotion zone of a ranked division, therefore causing the users that've been trying to climb the ranks for months (or longer) to wait another week until they're hopefully placed into a grouping without smurfs where they can actually get a fair and honest week of competition. To give some context for those that may be unfamiliar - Master I, for example, has weekly groupings of 30 people each where only the top 3 in each group get promoted. If 2 out of 3 of those people are smurfing (playing on brand new accounts with less than 50 career games, but rated 200+ over the avg rating necessary for promotion) you end up with 28 people all trying to fight for the only remaining spot that any of them have a realistic shot at reaching. One suggestion to counter this would be to allow for some kind of fast-track for rank promotion, where if someone is so far ahead of the rank's average rating, they auto promote to the next best rank, rather than keeping them held in the lower ranks and potentially having negative affects like previously mentioned. Doing this would benefit both parties - It would allow the smurf to reach a more accurate rank at a quicker pace and it would allow the non-smurfs to have a better shot at getting a fair weekly grouping. I'm curious if others also feel this way or if there's another suggested approach to dealing with this issue that hasn't been explored yet? I would love to hear the thoughts on this.
