Despite being a boss character, Master Hand is considered worse than any regular character in competitive play when unlocked through the Name Entry glitch. This is due to his high power and unconventional win conditions being nullified by his lack of defense options, slow attack and non-existent movement speed, and - in the case of doubles - his inability to attack the member of the opposing team with a lower port number.

Due to Master Hand being an undesirable character to play as, he is rarely explicitly mentioned as being banned in Melee tournament rulesets. However, he will usually be banned at a TO's discretion in the rare occasion he pops up, due to his win conditions stretching matches out extremely long and his matches always ending with the game crashing.