[issue] are tournament prizes out of control?

[jpmeyer]

This started to come out of an completely different discussion in the mod lounge, but I feel that it's an important discussion that we need to get the reponse of basic users.

At the Endicott tourney, "only" 90 people showed up.  90 people is a lot, but when you are giving away an entire set of Power 9, you need about 120 people @ $30 each and about 150 people @ $25.  And if you want to be like iamfishman and charge $15, you need to have well over 200 people, which I do not believe any Type 1 tourney stateside has done yet.  I am also not even taking into account the costs involved with renting a venue.  However, as many people as 90 people is, it was still few enough that kl0wn lost nearly a thousand dollars hosting that tourney.  It should also be noted that there was another tournament going on that day in Lennox, Massachusettes, but only 21 people showed to that (also not enough for the TO there to come close to recouping his costs,) and therefore even if all those people went to Endicott it would still be not close to enough people to break even.

I seriously doubt that this is even the TO's fault, either.  The tourney has heavily promoted here on TMD and from all the reports that I've read so far, extremely well run and a lot of fun.

One thing that I'm noticing more and more is that giving away pieces of power for prizes is becoming increasingly difficult. Like Mykeatog pointed out in his thread, at $25 each, he would need about 30 people to show up just to break even with the Lennox tourney, and he's only giving away one power card, one Drain, and some pricey but not obscene rares in Mana Crypt and Nether Void.  Furthermore, when people were like "You're only giving away one power card!", prices have gone up so much that a Mana Drain is still a $100 card.

I'm fine with someone giving away one power card. You can't go overboard with non-top 3 prizes though: stay simple, like the tournaments of yesteryear.

Remeber when it was like
1st place: Mox
2nd: $50-75 something
3rd: Some random store credit, something $25ish

What is wrong with that? You do that, charge $15, and people are happy. You need not go overboard with extraneous prizes that really don't effect the attendance. If you took out the t8 prizes and cut the price, the attendance would actually go up.

TOs need to know what their player base is, then make the prize structure around it. If you only expect a mid-level tournament, don't try to be the next Waterbury and then have to jack the price way up.

How do people feel about these prizes?  Have Waterbury and SCG's P9 tournies have set such a high standard that prizes are being given away in a larger amount than TO's have capacity to control?  Is it at the point where if a TO isn't giving away thousands of dollars in prizes that people just don't care?

[Mixing Mike]

I think so.  Lennox is holding a Recall event with the following...

1st: Ancestral
2ed: Itl. Mana Drain
3ed: Itl. Nether Void
4th: Span Mana Crypt
T8: Itl. Legends Pack + BB German Renissance Pack

All for $25 entry fee.  Mykeatog is smart with his Jet event.  A lower entry fee plus a better mox = the hotness.  I'd personally go to lots of average sized (30 people) for a $15 fee for a good prize (Sapph, Jet, Walk, Recall, ~Ruby~), then a few big ones.  

Don't get me wrong, Waterbury was excellent.  It's just that with so many huge events so often, and having mutiple events to choose from every weekend makes it hard to choose where to go.  I usually pick the lowest priced one, simply because I have a MUCH better chance of making Top 8 then I would at a 90+ event.

[bebe]

The Ontario Vintage Championship apparantly lost quite a bit of money as well. I fely sorry for Wayne who ran a very tight tournament. Despite being heavily promoted very few Americans turned up. This week at 401 Toronto, only 40 people showed up for a Mox at 10 a head. So it just broke even. When the Lotus goes up at 401, John would need fifty people at least at 15 a head.

When we offered P9 at Hairy T's in Toronto we averaged twenty to thirty people so we ended giving away redeamable points that could be cashed after a few tournaments for power. Everyone complained. We want to start quarterly tournaments for power but if we don't get responses these will be short lived.

I've been involved in starting up a few regular tournaments over the years. It is becoming very difficult now as the prices for power keep going up. I bought a Mox Sapphire, Mox Pearl and a Library for tournament prizes ( now at Leon's) but I will lose money on all these cards. Why? People bitch about entry fees, bitch about the locations, bitch about the times, etc. I will not be attending tournaments for awhile and will be distancing myself for the next two or three months and maybe longer.

Certainly, lowering expectations would be a good start. Offering a Drain should be fine for a medium sized venue but it seems people want more these days. I'm getting frustrated with the attitudes of a number of players these days.

[ruken]

This is a good point to bring up and is worth mentioning.  Tournament organizers would do well to start looking to alternatives for power cards as prizes.  Store credit, cash, booster boxes, Warhammer armies, whatever, or non-power cards like Bazaars, Mana Drains, black-bordered Birds, etc., stuff that skims the cost back to the value that power was last year, when I sold Keeper.. ;(

Personally, I'd love to start a regular cash T1 league up here in Washington.  $20+ tournaments, $5+ headsup matches, etc.  I think money's a great incentive for positive skill and tech development. Besides, it has the side effect of making these fools feel like re0l big-time gamb00lers, and that's entertaining in and of itself.

ruken

[Apollyon]

Endicott will hopefully be a wake-up call for TOs to realize that we don't need a "next big tournament", and we instead should go with smaller tournaments, as more people like those.

I would do 10 dollar flights for an Ital Drain all day. Or just have 8 person, single elim for 5 bucks for 2 packs of Italian Legends. In my opinion, I'm starting to get tired of all these "next big things", like how Lenox is offering prize support to make Dulmen look like a cheap tournament, but with a 25 dollar entry. I would much rather do a 32-man at 10 bucks for a pair of Ital Drains to first, an Ital Drain to 2nd, and 20 bucks to 3rd than what Lenox is doing.

Kerz is right with his idea of 1st place Mox, 2nd place Drain/Abyss/Moat/whatever, and a smaller 3rd place prize.

[serialjester]

I'm from Michigan, and we don't have these kind of tournaments every week. Yet as power becomes more accessible they are becoming more frequent, especially in the past 4-6 months. We're not at the point where we are shellshocked nor have a wide variety of choices/places to go for these tournaments, so for the most part people are taking it in stride. The issue that does exist is the porting over of the T2 shark into the T1 shark, which means that the players have the ethics of your average T2 player (read as none at all) and have the cardstock of a seasoned T1 player. People are happy to show up, to make a drive for a tournament, but they are not always happy with who they see when they get there. Over time this might snowball, but as of yet we don't have a steady power tournament scene here that affords people the 'luxury' of getting pissed off at every little situation.

On the prize structure I think it has gotten a little crazy, which is going to happen when there is no major corporate backing. Since the emphasis of the community is hinged on a 'network' structure I think more effort has to be made to coordinate the scheduling of these power tournaments so as they don't run along side each other nor are so close that it is impossible for people to afford to hit one tournament, maybe make some purchases and then have enough money just to pay entrance fee into the next one. Since this is a high dollar tournament scene we're talking about, people are bound to get cleaned out from one tournament, and then so and so shop 40 miles away is reduced to hosting a power tournament with the local 14 kids who always come in, rather than a larger crowd that isn't tapped out on gas, burnt out on cards and flat broke from the 18 hour triple power tournament up in Anytown, USA.

Having proxy rules encourages turnout, which is good. Scheduling all these tournaments so close together doesn't, as it doesn't let the tide of cash flow back in to the pockets of the average person attending. The supply is there, the demand is there, but the resources to get the crowds necessarily aren't. Valleys take time to refill after they empty.

[proGaming]

Well, I think people were just exhausted and simply didn't have the cash.  Between college books and supplies, car insurance, and other big events like Waterbury, SCG and GenCON, people simply didn't have the money or the energy to go.  It also didn't help that you needed hotel accomendations for the two days and from what I heard it wasn't an easy drive for most.

[Necrologia]

I went to Endicott and had a blast. Since I live in central PA, however, these are the only size tournies I can reasonably expect to make. It's just not worth it for me to drive 3+ hours for a shot at a single drain or whatever.

[Mixing Mike]

That's why you need to get your store into holding their own events.

[Addolorisi]

That's why you need to get your store into holding their own events.

There isn't one. Except for the place that does FNM and will occasianally do a T1 FNM. Prize support's a little lacking when it comes to FNMs compared to kl0wn's totally busted and awesome event.

Edit: As far as actually prizes, I think something like choice of Mox to first and Drains to the rest of the t4 would be enough to get me to show up. I really think that people are getting a bit spoiled by these awesome prize structures nowadays, and that it does have a negative effect on TO's, since they have to shell out a bunch of power to even hope of getting a decent crowd.

[MindFlayerMagi]

I agree that sometimes the prizes can be overboard. While having good prize support is a great thing to draw people in, I think there can be a cap based on how it is promoted. Promoting on TMD is great, but it can't do anything to the extent of SCG plastering their events on the front page for a month or two ahead. It is a matter of raw site traffic.

I find that a single piece of Power to first place, followed by other good prizes is great. My local store typically gets around 50-60 people for its Vintage events. The entry is kept quiet low: $10, or $13 with 5 proxies. The next tournament has an UL Mox Ruby up for first. The second and third place prizes are store credit. Here is where it gets good: The highest placing player without proxies, but who didn't get any prize, gets all the extra money collected from those playing with proxies. This easily gets up to $50 or so. This keeps people wanting to finish out their decks, insetad of relying on proxies. It is also a nice added bit of prize support to possibly further along the list.

The prizes are easily kept in budget, even with such a low entry fee. Since the events are held in the store, that also saves money.

I think that a tournament of 50 or more can give away one or two pieces of power, depending on entry fee. Still, there isn't any reason to complain about getting a Mana Drain or such for taking second. That's still a solid chunk of cardboard cash in your hand.

~MindFlayerMagi

[The Atog Lord]

I agree that having huge prizes for third-eigth place is not usually needed. While larger events can support these nicer prizes, smaller tournaments need not.

Still, I do think that for an event of decent size, the prizes from third through eight ought at least to be worth the entrance fee of the event. Recently, a friend of mine made top eight in a large Lotus tournament, but the TO saw fit to give him a prize worth less than the $15 entry fee. I can see his frustration with this, since he had spent all day playing.

In addition, I really like the idea Ray had of giving out playmats to 9th-16th place in the last Waterbury. These may not cost as much as power, but they were unique, and a really cool idea.

[Trollstorm]

Perhaps we could work on concentrating the t1 community? Like starting a T1 enthusaists camp. We'd all sleep on bunks, and go down to the swimmin' hole.

[jazzykat]

Stateside, I lived quite far from any sizable tournament. The closest tournament which I went to weekly was an hour a way and we played for booster packs...although all the money taken in was transformed into boosters.

Hadley was a bit over 2 hours and Waterbury was closer to 2.5 hours for me.  Maybe I think of things the wrong way but, when I play at a tournament I look at the overall cost to me while the TO has to look at the overall cost to them.

I don't know how much dealers pay for power now so I am not going to make up prices, but we all know how much they sell it for. I think that for a store either all of the money should be given out in store credit , or something like 70-80% of the take should be given out as cash.

The way I looked at playing in a tourney is if what I won didn't equal: entry fee+traveling expenses I lost. Placing top 8 is great but  I don't really care about that unless it carries a sizable(playable, and/or realistically sellable: ie...I don't want a nether void) prize.

Oh, and stores have the added benefit of selling stuff that players need. Tournaments such as the one that kl0wn put on are much tougher to break even at due to him not selling stuff and making money the retail way.

[everythingitouchdies]

I'm from Michigan, and we don't have these kind of tournaments every week... as of yet we don't have a steady power tournament scene here that affords people the 'luxury' of getting pissed off at every little situation.

Also from Michigan, I get excited about power Tournaments, but I have a family and a job and driving to New England or Virginia or Toronto or anywhere that takes more than getting up, driving, playing cards, and driving home while still having fun and not feeling like hell from lack of sleep or more time on the road than at the event is not feasable on a regular basis.

Since the summer started, I have played in:

Bazaar of Baghdad Tournament at Warp 9 in Clawson MI (1/2 hour drive for 15 dollars, second prize was duals and third through eigth was packs.)

Time Walk tournament in Windsor ON at Card's Edge (hour drive, 20 dollars, second prize four FOWs and third a Moat)

Library of Alexandria Tournament at F-Con in Okemos MI (hour drive, ten dollars, rest of prize support was packs.)

I enjoyed all of these tournaments. I think the Bazaar tournament was hurt in numbers because it wasnt proxy, the Time Walk would have had more with more advertising, and F con suffered a little from a mixture of both.

The only thing I didnt like was packs as prize support. I would have rather received a beat up dual than six packs of 5th dawn for 3rd place in Okemos.

I missed these events this summer that I intended on playing:

SCG Power Nine (I simply could not afford the trip)

Kalamazoo Lotus Tourney (two of my friends got married)

Columbus (Carpooling failed, cost/drive time alone and the discovery of a closer tournament the next day sealed it)

I have three more I am planning on playing in this year for sure, and unfortunately they will be one week after another without a break.

On the prize structure I think it has gotten a little crazy... it is impossible for people to afford to hit one tournament, maybe make some purchases and then have enough money just to pay entrance fee into the next one...

I love the big first prizes, but tapering the second through whatever is the only way you can keep this tournament scene alive. If I get a library for 1st at one and for 8th at another the schematics are simply wrong. You can still put up good vintage prizes after 1st/2nd like duals, Asian tech cards, playable foils, etc without losing interest.

Having proxy rules encourages turnout, which is good. Scheduling all these tournaments so close together doesn't, as it doesn't let the tide of cash flow back in to the pockets of the average person attending.

Frequency will thin the turnouts, for both monetary and life management reasons. Also if 3 tournaments are going on the same weekend, that is bad for all 3.

EITD

[Xman]

Living in Arizona, I rarely get power tournies.  There is one for a Mox Ruby in Gilbert, AZ, but that is damned near 200 miles away.  I am still going, but a 3 hour drive solo in my car for a single shot at a Mox ruby isn't my best option.

I would have to say that the power does draw people.  However, I also have to say the toruneis where they give away a complete set of P9 are a little over the top.  I like them, but they are over the top.

Now, I liked how Waterbury did it.  first few places got power, then the rest got high dollar good cards.

for smaller tournies, even scoring a piece of the pawrr (unlim mox, $300 ish) means you need 15 people at 15 each to break even for first place.  30 at 10 to break even.  But 30 at 15 means they have a few decent dollar T1 cards for 2nd and third and possibly 4th.

I do think I will talk with the new store, and see if I can get them to hold a power tourny in FLagstaff, assuming they get enough interest from locals and others.

edit:  While it is impressive to host full P9 tournies, I don't know what it is doing for the state of T1.  It is getting more power out ot people, but the people winning already have power.  If there was somneway of getting it to the people who play who can't really afford power, it would do wonderful things for T1 and the community.

[Devoted]

I dont know how people are thinking over there but a power card for the first place BB sol rings and such for the T8 should be enough. No one can seriously go to a 100ppl tournament with the only thought in his head is coming T8 and get power. 8ppl care about if the T8 power while a hundred care about if the entry fee is $15 or $30. I think most people are going to tournaments to have a great time and meet similar people and share thoughts, not to win $300 prices. A power card is enough exciting that people could go to the tournament for the chance of winning a single power.
I dont think people care a lot if its 1 or 8 power cards because that would theoretically be 8 times as expensive to enter. If you want to win a big amount of money you should Play Grand prix and PT:s. making money on T1 is hard because its not the most common format. T2 for example is much more popular format and have more money prices so if youre going to a tournament to win money or very nice card prices T2 is probably a better format.

And as everyone knows most diffrent thing between T1 and T2 players is that T1 players buy good cards for the money.  

[orgcandman]

you have to remember as well, the whole point of running tournaments, from a TO perspective, is to get a piece of the pie. I think a lot of players miss that when looking at what it costs a TO to host a venue.

The prizes are the most glaringly obvious. What you don't see is the cost for the venue, the cost for people working the venue, the cost for advertising, the cost for food that is brought, and other costs that just happen (IE: car breaks down while getting to said venue; hotel room for the night at said venue, etc..).

15 people at $15 does NOT justify a $300 first place prize. It justifies a $100 first prize. And that's if you're in a decent location, with staff.

Although we as a "Vintage" community want to keep things free, open, and hippy-esque, we must remember that the proverbial man needs his cream too, and unless we look at it from that perspective, I don't believe we can really understand just what it takes to hold a tournament.

Bottom line: We need to STFU and focus more on getting people to simply
host tournaments, rather than worry about a NM beta set of power as the prize for T8.

[ctthespian]

To me it seems that power tournys started to get rediculious when a cearting TO started to compete with Ray's Waterbury tournys giving out multiple pieces of power.   Till then it was sort of a common fact that 1 mox was a big tourny and if a lotus was put up that's a really big tourny.  Top 8 prizes were determined by attendance often.  This was all cool.  Also most other power events were held is stores where the owner had the space for the players and didn't need to rent.

Now everyone feels that it's only worth going to a tourny where theres more than one power piece up for grabs.  It's unrealistic to expect that from montly tournaments.  Hell a mox and mana drain for prizes is almost worth $400 statewise now.  That's 20 people at $20.  

The tournaments in Somers are another example where the store owner took a hit on his first if not first few tournys.  They are good tournaments to be sure.  Maybe the assesment of the turnout was somewhat incorrect on Matt's part there.  Still there good events and I think better for him now.

It's unfortunate that the endicott tournament wasn't more successful and that money was lost by the TO's.  However this is what the second tournament that's been run in that area.  Compared to Waterbury the Endicott/Syracuse tournys are babies.   Ray has built his player base for years to a point where he can be pretty sure of the attendance and plan his prizes accordingly.

In closing, peoples expectations of prizes have to change and they still have to attend events.  Also TO's should know their player base and if not a store owner or vendor accept the risk that you may very well lose money.  Maybe it's better to leave the big tournamets to the store owners or seasoned TO's.

-Keith

[Moxlotus]

In the Midwest  my friends and I have been to tournaments at U of Illinois, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Eu claire.  Everywhere we go is at least 3 hours and we travel to as many as possible.

The tournaments with about 25-30 people have
1-mox
2-75
3-50

The tournaments with around 20 have been
1. workshop/library/10 duals
2. Drain
3. Foil Vamp/Intuition or something.

The entry fee is usually 20 or sometimes 15.  I think this is a pretty good prize structure for the amount of people and the prizes.

[Covetous]

Before I moved away from Maine to Rochester, I held two Mox tourneys and a Lotus tourney.  I has $25 entry fee for each one and had turnouts of 25 & 20 for the two Mox tourneys (with a Drain and a Zerk for 2nd prize) and a little over 30 for the Lotus tourney (which was 2 hours closer to the rest of the world from the others--go figure).  I basically broke even with all of these tourneys.  In fact, I probably could have gotten more out of the lotus considering that it was NM.  Basically, I agree--a lot of people are focusing on big tourneys at the expense of smaller ones.  To lose $100 on a tourney sucks--to lose $1000 is abysmal.  A lot of places don't have type 1 tourneys often/ever and even more don't actually have real ones for power.  

I'd hold a power tourney each month for the next 15 months if I could spare the time and guarantee an equivalent or better return on my cards than I could get for them on ebay.  But, nothing is guaranteed.  When I held a lotus tourney 2 hours north of Boston, I figured that at least 50 people would show up, but we didn't even get 40 (if you will recall this was the tourney where Rich Shay lost to Fish in the finals).  A lot of people simply won't show up for power tourneys if they're not really close (for example, people who are in area where there are lots of power tourneys), while other people have to drive a while to get to any decent tournament of any size (i.e. living in northern maine or Rochester).  

A lot of places focus on other formats that are inferior to type 1, thus decreasing local tourney interest.  Stores don't usually make money on type 1 players--we don't buy many packs and usually don't buy our cards from card stores.  Type 2 makes money for stores, and thus a lot of stores eschew Vintage formats and even Extended for Limited and Type 2/Block, which makes the owners money.  That's just how it it--and TO's also need to make sure that they don't try to compete with big tourneys.  However, even if you don't have your tourney on the same day/weekend as a big tourney, the presence of that tourney can decrease your numbers because people either don't want to reveal tech or just got back from the tourney.  It happens.  

We ARE jaded--people say "Well, so-and-so gave away full p9 for his tourney (or 2 loti or whatever) so why should I go to a tourney with only one Mox?"  Winning small tourneys is much easier than winning big ones--people sometimes forget that.  If you go to a big tourney, you can't reasonably expect to win unless you truly ARE a great player.  A small tourney can go to anyone as long as you're competent.

[Komatteru]

I'm also from Michigan and played with Ben (EITD) at the Bazaar tourney over the summer.  That tournament advertised that the Bazaar would be the prize only if 40 people showed up.  There was like 35 there, but they still gave the Bazaar away anyway.  The other prizes included a foil Blinkmoth Nexus, a Chrome Mox, Birds of Paradise, and minty Badlands and minty Bayou.  The price of admission was $15.  If that Bazaar had been a piece of power, the tournament would have lost money.  As it stands, it maybe have broken even or lost a little bit (since the store had to rent out an empty place to play).

The Time Walk tourney and Library tourney occured in the last month, and I am currently in Indiana for school, so I missed those.  I can honestly say that I was quite lucky to have found a place 5 minutes from me to play T1 over the summer every week with excellent competition (Mark B also played at that store).  There really aren't that many power tournaments around Detroit, which tells you something: Detroit is a big city with a large player base.  In addition to the 5 million people in the Detroit metro, there are hundreds of thousand of people less than an hour and a half away from Detroit (Lansing, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, etc.) as well as Toldeo, OH and that area.  Cleveland is 3 hours away, Pittsburgh is 5, and Columbus is 4.  Consider that from all of those places, Detroit is closer than Chicago by a considerable distance.  Chicago is a lot larger, but if a large city such as Detroit cannot support a power tourney, what city can?  There really aren't that many cities on this side of the country that are larger than Detroit: Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and the Northeast metropolis, are really the only ones.  Those cities are ungodly far from Detroit and people a few hours away from Detroit.

So why is it hard to get enough support for a TO to hold a power tournament?  The cost of admission is a minor detail, if it is kept at $20 or less.  A badge into a convention such as Origins or Gencon costs more than that, and then you have to pay for events on top of that, toss in the cost of obtaining a hotel room and taking a few days off work.  If you start having to charge $30-35, you'll start turning players away, but $15-20 is not unreasonable in the slightest.

The problem, I think, is the distance, in this respect.  I wanted to go to SCG over the summer, but it's 10 hours from Detroit.  Most players will have to get very lucky to win the tournament, and know that capturing the piece of power will be very difficult.  Take a look at tournament results from the big tourneys: Gencon, Waterbury, etc.  You always see the same names in the T8.  The average player* knows that he doesn't really stand much of a chance in a field composed of the best players in the format.  He is not willing to drive 4-5 hours (or more) to get (probably) annihilated at the prospect of winning a piece of power.  The average player would much rather play for $50 in store credit at a place where he has a much greater chance of winning than drive a great distance.  Simply put, the average player feels a little left out when he gets to a tournament where it seems like everyone else is on a team and he's flying solo.  He doesn't feel like he has a chance to win (he might, he might not), and so he finds another tournament to play in.  The problem is that there is no city that is close enough for everyone to hold a big tournament.  No matter where you put it, you're going to be too far from half of the players out there.

*I define average player as the person who is serious about the game, reading TMD, SCG, and the like, but is not a member of a team and whose testing is limited to tournaments and small circles of friends.  He might like to be on a team and post better results, but he doesn't really have the time nor perhaps the resources to do so--he may not own all the power, but has the T1 fundamentals and a bunch of the T1 expenses.  Clearly, this describes the majority of T1 players (myself included).


As a side note, there is nothing for support here in Terre Haute, IN (where I go to school).  I have to drive a hour every week for FNM...that's as good as it gets for me.  I drove 4 hours (5 with the time difference, which I forgot about) to Smennen's tournament because it was the first opportunity I had to play T1 that was reasonably close since Gencon.  I know I'm not the only person in this situation.  What are we supposed to do?

[Rosholm]

You know what? Less prizes are really ok! Oh, 3379873492378 ppl already said the same thing? My bad, sorry.

[Dante]

To be honest, I think more people care about the prizes than the entertainment/fun - if I don't top 8/win a prize, I don't look at it as "Well now I'm not $20 entry plus gas..."  I consider that entertainment dollars, just like going to a movie or out for drinks....honestly, I'd play for almost no prizes, if I want to get paid for my time, I'll play more poker and less Magic.

I think the TO's to need to rethink their prize structure based on what kind of effort they put into promoting it - you only get really big tournaments (which you need to break even/make money on multiple power prizes) if you have promoted your venue/event.  How long did it take Ray to make money on Waterbury and get the kind of turnout he does?  probably 2-3 of them.  

Realistically, unless you've had successful tournaments in the past and can HYPE up your tournament (i.e. the SCG tournaments, Waterbury, etc), you're probably going to lose money giving away massive prizes like that....

[Jacob Orlove]

I think TO's really need to start milking that entertainment angle. Ray does a great job, and anyone who stayed the 2nd day at endicott knows how completely amazing it was, but most tournaments are just show up, play, award prizes. Making it more fun for the players can be even better than an increased prize structure.

[DrLambda]

Well, i don't understand why tournament organizers dont give away store credit to the top 3, like giving 60% of the total entrance money for first, 30% to second and 10% to third, then go for 15$ entrance fee and be happy.

That way, if enough players appear, you still are able to give away a Lotus or Mox for first, and you wont make any loses. That doesnt count in the rooms etc, but you basically get the idea.

[xthexpunisherx]

I think something that should be thought of instead of "WIN TEH POWER NINE!!!1!11!1!!" Tourney of the week we should try having our TO's fix something that we have shown in this thread is wrong.  The top players win the prizes 80% (or whatever) of the time and if you don't make top 8 you get nothing.  How about giving prizes to EVERYONE.
 I'm not saying you need to give tons of stuff away but I bet you would see a lot of people excited if you gave away random foils, draft sets, good staple cards etc.  Hell we talk about "drafting" the power 9 why don't the bottom 9 players draft something too? (Last place gets a foil Tarnished Citadel! W007!)  In all honesty we are a community here out of all the people in the world there aren’t a whole lot that play Vintage.  Why don't we reward everyone who shows up with something.  Frankly if your answer is "TOs shouldn't have to shell out more money/prizes, no one will show up" well you know what?  If there are no Vintage players there are no tourneys so no money to be made.
In conclusion to this idea of mine, we must all admit there have been mistakes currently with TO’s giving too high a prize support to too few players.  I think its time to go from Power 9 or bust to something along the lines of:
1. Mox
2. Workshop
3. Drain
4-8 credit /playmats/signed cards/beta cards /playable foils and cards (intuition/vamp tutor)
8-16 draft sets/packs
The Rest – Draft bad cards, give repacks or regular packs

And please note this would be a pretty big tournament not just your run of the mill $5 weekly thing.  Its just a thought but I think we need to help out or TO’s with our ideas because we are the reason they are around and we should also give them options because they provide us with such a great service and we need TO’s like Ray and Bryce around to keep the vintage scene alive.  

PS I’d really like the TO’s to comment on all of our ideas, they put on the tourneys they need to input too

[Moxlotus]

I think most people would rather more money go to the top 2 or 4 spots than 9-16 and lower.  That is why little crap prizes are unpopular a lot of time at smaller tournaments.

[Apollyon]

I don't like crap prizes, just because they are annoying to the people who do well. I like seeing money go to t4 or t8, no question, even t16 on a large tournament. I don't want to enter into a tournament where you pay 10 bucks to enter, and you win a draft set, regardless if you get first or last place. There should be an incentive to win, and not for a prize disproportionate to the number of players.

I also hate tournaments where first place is a Lotus, and 2nd place is a foil Goblin Game, because that makes 2-4 feel really upset that they got 2nd for a dollar card. Andystok recently held a tournament that gave out 8 Lotii. It was great, except 7 of them were oversized and the only prizes that they got for making t8 on a rather large tournament.

[Ric_Flair]

I personally think that TOs, more than offering HUGE prize structures, need to do some basic logistics and have good prize support.  Trying to have a Waterbury every weekend is not only a losing proposition for the TOs but is a real pain in the ass for many people to attend.  

First, TOs need to have a good idea as to how to move things along.  I know that big events are fun, but 4am is way too late.  Perhaps events with over 150 people could have flights with winners playing in rolling play offs.  

Second, TOs need to realize that T1 has a higher average age of players and as such there are more commitments to deal with.  The Cape had events for a while that started at like 1 or 2 in the afternoon.  Now I am sure some people out there are pot smoking hippies, but start times like that make it all but impossible for those of us with responsibilities to attend.  Start times at 10 or 11 are ideal, especially if they are adhered to.

Third, TOs need to coordinate.  Two or three events on the same weekend makes it difficult for people to attend events.  One event a week is perfect.  Also, Saturdays are almost universally a better day to run events.  Sunday is a football day, even for those of us that detest football.  It affects attendance.  

The issue of prizes is not a huge deal.  Put up a Mox and people will come.  These HUGE events are totally unnecessary.  

I would far, FAR rather attend a well run event on a Saturday that begins on time and finishes around 5 or 6 for a single Mox, than some fantabulous prize structure event that does not start until 3:30.  And let Waterbury be Waterbury.  No event can replace it, competing, prize wise is not a wise idea.  

Is all this scheduling something other people care about or is it just me being a curmudgeon?