I don't think you would wait that long without bots (and remember without bots your reward per battle win would 5-10x as the DEC pool would be shared between less population (E.G without bots suddenly Splinterlands goes from 500k accounts to probably less than 100k, we seen this in the early stages when the owning of cards rewards update came in brifely before the bot farmers figured out they would just rent out every card. The rewards suddenly sky rocketed while the bot farmers spent a week setting up auto renting for their 1000s of accounts). Anyways, you'd simply be matched to the next available ranked player which is great as it would mean you could rank up faster if you beat a much higher opponent instead of grinding out 15-20 points per win providing you were playing below your max capability but the slightly longer wait for a game would pay for itself in significantly higher returns.