Sectional
A sectional is a tournament section limited to players inside a set rating range, so that each competitor mostly faces opponents of similar strength and prizes are fought for fairly.
Also called: rating section
Many weekend tournaments split the field into sections by rating, for example a top section, a middle section and a lower section. Each section is paired and scored separately and has its own prizes. A sectional is simply one of those groups.
For a student, the section you enter matters more than it first seems. Playing in your own range gives you competitive games, which is where most improvement and most rating movement happens. Playing one section up can be a good stretch goal, but you will often face stronger opponents and fewer winnable games. Playing well below your level may win a trophy but teaches less.
Check the entry rules before you register. Organizers usually use the most recent published rating on a set date, and some allow a player to play up but not down. Unrated players are normally placed in a section by the organizer. Section boundaries and prize rules differ between events, so read the announcement, and ask the tournament director if anything is unclear.
Compare it with Scholastic tournament. A scholastic tournament is an event for school-age players, usually organized in sections by grade or age, with prizes for individual students and often for school teams as well.
Rating and title terms like "Sectional" matter once you know your next step, and the improvement plans by rating band set out a weekly routine for each rating range.
Related terms
In a Swiss-system tournament the number of rounds is announced in advance, nobody is knocked out, and every round pairs players who have scored about the same so far, never matching the same two players twice.
An open tournament accepts any entrant who meets the basic entry rules, whatever their rating or title, so that beginners and grandmasters can sit in the same section.
A scholastic tournament is an event for school-age players, usually organized in sections by grade or age, with prizes for individual students and often for school teams as well.
A rating category is a band of ratings, often 200 points wide, that groups players of similar strength so they can be sectioned, paired, prized and described together in a tournament.
A pairing is the assignment of two players to meet in a round, together with the colors each will have, and in a Swiss event it is produced fresh after every round.
A rating list is the published table of every player's current rating, refreshed at regular intervals so that tournaments and rankings can use one fixed snapshot.
Guides that go further
What a rating measures, how FIDE, Lichess, US Chess and chess.com compute theirs, and why the numbers differ.
How the Candidate Master, FIDE Master, International Master and Grandmaster titles are earned, with every Handbook clause.
The Handbook rules for a first FIDE rating: five rated games, the 1400 floor, the two 1800 draws and a worked example.
Want to spot this in your own games?
A first lesson starts with your games: George reviews them and builds a study plan around what he finds.