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Again, the account being active on ladder is all you need to stop this. That will happen, I agree. But ensuring that the account is active over the span of X number of games/months basically eliminates that concern.

its not hard to keep an account in a league though... how do you prove this?

No it's not... It's equally not difficult to buy an account, ladder it to desired league, and then sign up a new forum user with same name as your smurf, and just not say anything.

I 100% think that if you take on the extra bit of work required as an admin, it will reduce overall smurfing, by giving players who really want to play enough to buy an account and ladder it a way to play in a league with legitimacy.

Wise man is wise.

I also don't think making more work for volunteer admins checking out whether people have legitimately played a number of games with a particular race at a particular skill level in order to be eligible is a nice thing to be doing.

What if a player has race switched (e.g lost interest the original main race)? Was masters toss but no longer so? And to make it clear, has a separate account for that other race which is diamond or any other league but masters? And is actively laddering on it?

If their old account wasnt ranked, it wouldnt count at all in my eyes, it will be like that account never existed.

Haven't read all other replies yet, sorry if repeating anything.

If a player is known to the admins, and we can see that they are actively and legitimately laddering on a second account and the race they are playing on that account is in the right league for the tournament, then I feel they should be able to play.

If their game understanding, or anything (mechanics, micro, whatever), is above that league, and is enough to get them promoted, then it will get them promoted. Obviously they need to have been laddering legitimately on that account for a decent amount of time to establish that, and I wouldn't be letting someone play who came and said 'hey I bought a second account to offrace with yesterday and got placed silver, can I play BSG?" Err, no. But if it's clearly demonstrable that their skill level places them within the tournament league restrictions, then sure, as long as they're upfront about their other account being higher, and give us time to check them out... it'd be a case-by-case thing, but I wouldn't give a blanket 'no'.

If the player is consistantly in a low league, how does that demonstrate a level similar to their main race? Do you honestly think that that player would purposely stay in a low league just to play in BSGs or GPDs or whatever? That's a little farfetched. I've played protoss and zerg a lot and my mechanics are horrible as those races. I like to think I am a very mechanical player (hurr pun mech op hurr) but my zerg and protoss skills are terrible. Does that mean I have master level zerg/protoss just because my terran is that level?

It is a ranked account that is being actively laddered as well [now that he has switched to T]. The player simply could not decide between the 2 races but when he was doing so, I advised him to keep the 2 accounts separate for each race so to show a true reflection of his league [I remember ducky :P]

I just hate special cases like that...

But they are special cases. We're hardly gonna say 'go for it!' to every random who asks, but if we know that they're legit but say no just because of the principle, that's just silly. If we know them, they're been a regular in the tourney for a while or whatever, then we have more information with which to make the decision. Simple as that.

Edit: What Goose's first paragraph says below

Notoriety does count for something. Even in a legal court = services to the community. It's all about trust. If someone has earnt trust, you can't take it away just because of some PC idea about equality that has no bearing on the real world.

I think it comes down to the definition of old and new accounts/races/whatever. If someone has laddered 20 games in the last 2 weeks, then their league will be accurate. Questions about whether they are deliberately trying to hold a lower league is irrelevent, as that falls under the heading of smurfing. Whether or not someone is a smurf is completely independent of race switching.

So denying a race switcher because he might be a smurf is just not right. There is no reason why a race switcher is more or less likely to be a smurf. Make sure they have 20 legit games as the new race in the span of 2 weeks. Nothing more that can really be done beyond that.

If you're going to check match history for everyone who wants to offrace, then fine. As long as it's not just only checking it for people who know the admins...

Getting a character reference in court is different to excluding people you don't know and never met from something cause you don't know whether they're going to be trustworthy yet.

I was replying to your hypothetical not to an actual case sorry

I dont know much about the case that started this all, but if someone used to be masters protoss, doesnt use that account and its inactive and is now diamond terran on a different account, as an admin, I wouldnt even consider that first account to exist anymore. So Id let that player play in a GPD.

If they came to me and were upfront about the fact that they were offracing and were higher on another account, and didn't expect me to approve them five minutes before the start time, then sure. But if there was anything at all suss, like leaving games (and 'I don't like TvT so I leave' isn't gonna cut it as a excuse!) then I'd be saying no.