Ubastax parties like its 2005 at chicago side event 3-8-09

[BC]

Alan:
A:  Guess you should have won first and taken home the Beta Sapphire….

C:  While we are always sorry to see players unhappy… I am sure we will figure out a way to have the tournaments go on without you.  OR, we can actually have a discussion and see if there is not a way for both sides to be happy (at least about prizes… about you being an immature bigot – well, I can’t help that….  )

D:  Oh yeah… that comment.  Nice.  I am not really sure how to reply to people on this except that if you made that comment in front of me during an event you would be ejected for unsportsmanlike idiocy and removed from the venue permanently.  Wow – that would have solved so many issues!  Seriously… I am sure you thought that was funny… and I guess we know what camp that puts you in.

Ah… and more enlightened comments from “John Jones”

Alan:   “John”, while I am sure you are a thing of beauty (don’t know who you are or what you look like) I would like to think that if I saw you I would not pass judgment (certainly not on a public forum) regarding what your “interests” are…    Seriously… after you posted this you know you went back and read it…and you really thought that was necessary, smart or fair?

Okay folks – let’s chat about what has been bugging many of you and not about the stupid comments made by people who … well, I don’t know what the hell they were thinking.

Congratulations, your post was as immature and inflammatory as any I've seen so far on this thread.  You've lowered yourself to the lowest common denominator.

I think most people have made peace with the Swiss+1 format, although contrary to what you say I don't think you would have heard much of an uproar if you changed it to Swiss with a cut to top 8.  In any case, I still do not agree with the prize support, regardless of you having to feed your kids.  Giving away ~$1000 in cards is the same as selling $1000 in cards, which already makes you money since you undoubtedly bought them for much less.  People are upset about the 50% prize support because the majority of stores out there are able to give away at least 80% and not go out of business.  It has become the standard.  Your reasons for the prize support are weak and self indulgent.  I do not apologize for anything I've said in this thread.

EDIT: What is this, by the way?

Cat is out of the bag on this….  And I am debating what I am going to do about it. 

Are you thinking about banning Vroman and John Jones from future Pastimes events or something?  Try that, and see how much good will it buys you from the Vintage community.

[Shock Wave]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your reply. My name is Richard Mattiuzzo and I attended your Vintage event. I appreciate the time you have taken to respond in this thread, thereby giving me a clear indicator as to whether or not to support your events in the future. In regards to your rebuttal:

Answer:  What’s “fair.”  First, please understand what I do for a living… I run events and I sell games.  That is how I pay for my kids to eat and how I pay to put a roof over my family’s head.  That is what I do.  Every week we risk paying for rent, prizes and employees with the hopes to turn a profit so my employees can keep their jobs and I can keep my store.

And please consider a couple of other expenses that a store or organizer has when putting on an event…  - the venue and the staff.  There were three judges for this event (not counting the scorekeeper as he was doing other events as well).  The venue was hugely expensive – and yes, there was a big GP to pay for that – but we did not know how many would be there for the GP and we have to count all the events towards the bottom line.  You can also throw in the fact that the Vintage event, as part of the overall event, also cost me for: insurance, clean-up, tables, chairs, P/A and security.  Those were all costs that I incurred when running this event.  And we take all the events income towards those costs.

That's not really news. Every TO that runs an event has something to lose. It sounds as if you are looking for some sort of pity where players should agree that since you have kids to feed, it is acceptable to grind out as much money from their entry fees as possible. Whatever costs are incurred to you as part of running the event are your burden, and nobody really cares to hear you belly ache about them. Perhaps you should have reimbursed the players for the gas and time spent to attend your event, and deduct that from their entry fees?

Sometimes we win… sometimes we lose.   In this forum you guys are deciding what is “fair” for me to make from this event.  In my opinion we gave away about $1100-$1300 in cards (Beta Sapphire, Grim Tutor, a couple Foil Polluted Deltas (I think) and 4 Guru Lands .  If only 15 of you had shown up, would you have been “ok” if I had said, “well – we didn’t get enough people to justify giving away the Beta Sapphire, so here is a Library and a Mana Drain instead.”  I don’t think that would have sat well with you.

Well this is exactly the issue: Players are taking exception with how much profit you have decided is "fair". Since you are so concerned with making a profit, I highly doubt you would have given away the prizes you advertised had 15 players showed up.

I also strongly believe that the majority of what we provide is entertainment.  If you are not playing Magic for fun… you really are in the wrong thing….  So, my guess is that about half of the people reading this or more have gone to see Watchmen (what did you think? Me, about 2 ½ stars).  I know that when I went, I paid $12 for my IMAX ticket and $9 for popcorn and a diet coke – (now you want to talk about unfair!)  So I dropped about $20 for a movie that barely entertained me for two hours.  There was no personal attention.  If I called “judge” during that movie I would have been thrown out!  I left with nothing but a memory from the movie and butter stains on my shirt.  But I knew going in it was a cost of entertainment.  I figured I deserved to take the standee in the lobby as a prize for being there – but silly me, they threatened to call the police!  It sounds to me like most folks had a really good time at the GP and at the Vintage tournament – which is my goal.  Handing out over a thousand dollars of prize seemed like a fun extra!

That's a particularly fitting analogy, except you conveniently omit the natural conclusion of your example. If I pay $20 to go and see a movie, and end up leaving with nothing more than a full bladder and a butter stained shirt, what do you think the odds are that I would see that movie again or recommend it to other people? Perhaps you think that people leaving the theatre under those circumstances are "satisfied customers"? What do you think is the likelihood of retaining such customers?

The last line from the above paragraph is amusing too. You handed out $1000 in prizes because you thought it would be fun? Right. Translation: "I handed out $1000 in prizes because my objective was to make a profit. If, in making a profit, my customers are also satisfied, bonus."

I know that a lot of stores run events and give back everything in prizes.  I have three comments about that:  1. Look at how many stores have gone out of business in the past 10 years for not worrying about their bottom line.  (Pastimes is now in its 18th year) 2. They are not worried about making money on their event (foolish) , they are just hoping you will buy cards, candy or whatever.  I hope this works for them – it is not my model. 3. When those stores go out of business, you lose places to play.  Support them, they need you and you need them!

As far as handing everything back in prizes, I can’t afford to do this.  You all want events – even big events?  You need organizers who are willing to take a risk and who will put up prizes (umm… there was a Beta Mox Sapphire guaranteed here) and have certified judges etc…  Sometimes we make money on our events, sometime we do not.  (Someone said we made 60% from this event - it actually comes out to about 15-20%)  I look at our event income at the end of the year and hope it is in the black – so that next year I can be back and seeing you at even more fun events!

Thankfully, there are many successful TOs in the Vintage community that operate under a completely different model, with customer satisfaction being their utmost priority. Their philosophy seems to be that in satisfying their customers, their customers will continually return, thereby netting them a profit in the long run. If your system works for you, then kudos. You certainly will not have my business again in the future, however.

Regards,

Richard

[vroman]

if you can find a player base willing to consistently pay to play in tourneys w 40% payout, then more power to you. Im not in that group.
we dont need to play subjective semantic games about the definition of 'fair'. either ppl will play in your tourneys or they wont, and that will tell you what players expect.
in this most recent event, you went strikingly against the established equilibrium. even given the hindsight of placing highly, I resent that I spent my time and money to enter.
I stand by everything Ive said.

[Magnum Innominandum]

2.   Prizes.   I won’t quote anyone from the forums here, but let’s just say that some of you thought they were not “fair”.

Answer:  What’s “fair.”  First, please understand what I do for a living… I run events and I sell games.  That is how I pay for my kids to eat and how I pay to put a roof over my family’s head.  That is what I do.  Every week we risk paying for rent, prizes and employees with the hopes to turn a profit so my employees can keep their jobs and I can keep my store.  Sometimes we win… sometimes we lose.   In this forum you guys are deciding what is “fair” for me to make from this event.  In my opinion we gave away about $1100-$1300 in cards (Beta Sapphire, Grim Tutor, a couple Foil Polluted Deltas (I think) and 4 Guru Lands .  If only 15 of you had shown up, would you have been “ok” if I had said, “well – we didn’t get enough people to justify giving away the Beta Sapphire, so here is a Library and a Mana Drain instead.”  I don’t think that would have sat well with you.

I strongly believe that the feeling peoples had were due to the fact that prize structure was not advertise properly, at least that the feeling I got reading all the comments peoples have expressed on this forum. If you going for static prize(even if this a bad idea in my opinion prize structure should always be adaptive to attendance, of course if you want to guarantee a minimum prize to have more attendance that your business), that should be advertise properly saying prizes not based on attendance and the listing of the static prizes on your advertisement.

This way peoples would know exactly what they are playing for and could not complain about winning a swamp (vintage player like cards bases on utility, even if they got a pimp factor, guru land are pretty narrow in that category and for a Stax player this is just worthless).

And please consider a couple of other expenses that a store or organizer has when putting on an event…  - the venue and the staff.  There were three judges for this event (not counting the scorekeeper as he was doing other events as well).  The venue was hugely expensive – and yes, there was a big GP to pay for that – but we did not know how many would be there for the GP and we have to count all the events towards the bottom line.  You can also throw in the fact that the Vintage event, as part of the overall event, also cost me for: insurance, clean-up, tables, chairs, P/A and security.  Those were all costs that I incurred when running this event.  And we take all the events income towards those costs. 

I don't want to get rude, but the expenses were probably split among the weekend events and something went wrong if proportion kept running the vintage event cost you more than all the profit generated from it (keeping vintage communities stimulated at your venue making sure you keep selling cards for that format, making sure that the venue was used at almost 100% of it capacity for the time you got it to minimize it global cost, profit generated for the sale of the cards from the prize people didn't chose their prize so this is kind of a forced sale of card that usually sleep for long in your inventory and pure profit generated from the difference in the prize charged and the value of prize given)

I also strongly believe that the majority of what we provide is entertainment.  If you are not playing Magic for fun… you really are in the wrong thing….  So, my guess is that about half of the people reading this or more have gone to see Watchmen (what did you think? Me, about 2 ½ stars).  I know that when I went, I paid $12 for my IMAX ticket and $9 for popcorn and a diet coke – (now you want to talk about unfair!)  So I dropped about $20 for a movie that barely entertained me for two hours.  There was no personal attention.  If I called “judge” during that movie I would have been thrown out!  I left with nothing but a memory from the movie and butter stains on my shirt.  But I knew going in it was a cost of entertainment.  I figured I deserved to take the standee in the lobby as a prize for being there – but silly me, they threatened to call the police!  It sounds to me like most folks had a really good time at the GP and at the Vintage tournament – which is my goal.  Handing out over a thousand dollars of prize seemed like a fun extra!

I don't get the point of this comparison, this is like saying you complain about this tournament but it provided you so much more entertainment than going to see a bad music show and man this show cost me a total of 40 box and even if I called "judge" during the show nobody would have heard me! All I got is memory....... So what with magic? If you don't like bad movies, inform yourself critic are often out before movies goes in theatre and just don't go and that way you'll have more money to feed your kids.

I know that a lot of stores run events and give back everything in prizes.  I have three comments about that:  1. Look at how many stores have gone out of business in the past 10 years for not worrying about their bottom line.  (Pastimes is now in its 18th year) 2. They are not worried about making money on their event (foolish) , they are just hoping you will buy cards, candy or whatever.  I hope this works for them – it is not my model. 3. When those stores go out of business, you lose places to play.  Support them, they need you and you need them!

As far as handing everything back in prizes, I can’t afford to do this.  You all want events – even big events?  You need organizers who are willing to take a risk and who will put up prizes (umm… there was a Beta Mox Sapphire guaranteed here) and have certified judges etc…  Sometimes we make money on our events, sometime we do not.  (Someone said we made 60% from this event - it actually comes out to about 15-20%)  I look at our event income at the end of the year and hope it is in the black – so that next year I can be back and seeing you at even more fun events!

That is  part of the business, to have organized tournament myself, you gotta accept the fact that sometimes you make money and other time you don't, important part is to figured out why you didn't and to correct the situation in order to generate no lost in future events you run  and most important don't take risk beyond your capacity .  But from what I learn, having prizes based on attendance is often the right formula to stimulate peoples to come and bring friends with them in order to have the bigger prizes offered and by the same time minimize the risk you take. At the opposite, Guaranteed static prizes  often tend to have the invert effect, people hope that not to much people will show up so they have a better shot at scoring the prizes offered.

Okay – I am almost off my soapbox, and I know I did not answer every comment from this thread.  But please read a couple more things:

1.    If you are ever upset about how an event is set up, the prizes, a judge, or how a scorekeeper handled something – find the Organizer and talk to them.  We do honestly like mature feedback!  That doesn’t mean we agree, it means that we can actually dialogue about what the issue is.  Don’t be abusive, don’t start name calling or be a jerk – try talking TO the organizer, not behind his back about him and the people who helped make the event a fun event that was run with integrity.

And while I am not saying that people should not air their feelings on public boards – maybe you want to take a breath and contact the person you are going to accuse in advance of that and see what they have to say.   Maybe there is a good reason it happened and then you don’t have to post.  Maybe you still disagree in which case you can always post afterwards.

I think peoples just got their frustrations out here, but you are right, if something upset you speak with the Organizer, that way you'll have a chance to have things changed. I don't think that all tournament organizers come and check out forums in order to know if someone, somewhere is not happy with how things went, voice yourself, speak with the persons involved.

2.   If you have issues with Pastimes and any part of our organization you can email me directly – alan @ pastimes . net   If it is serious, please call our store at 847-470-9636 and tell them you need to speak to me.

I LIKE TO TALK TO PLAYERS.  If you have an idea, suggestion or want to become involved – let me know.  I am insanely interested and approachable.

3.   DO NOT INSULT MY JUDGES OR OTHER STAFF.  While I am extremely patient and understand that sometimes things do not go your way… there is no excuse for this.  NONE.  And it will not be tolerated.  I seriously hope that after this post some of the people here will re-think what they have said and consider editing and apologizing…  and even then I am not sure that it will do any good.  Cat is out of the bag on this….  And I am debating what I am going to do about it. 

Thanks everyone for “listening”, feel free to be in touch.  I hope to see you soon.

Alan
www.pastimes.net

I am not sure, but I don't think you can do anything about it, at least anything legal from wizards point of vue as long as this doesn't append during the event. Even if peoples said bad things about how bad the staff was after the event in a forum, there is not much that can be done in banning them from sanctioned event you run.

Of course this doesn't excuse that fact that some words were probably beyond what is acceptable to some peoples, but that's life when you put a bit of black humour in something some will find it funny and other will cry and denounce it, personally I think that they were funny and should not be taken at first level. This part remind me of the "pretty in pink" and "long nails" episode of some months ago.

[vroman]

Cat is out of the bag on this….  And I am debating what I am going to do about it. 

Are you thinking about banning Vroman and John Jones from future Pastimes events or something?  Try that, and see how much good will it buys you from the Vintage community.

I missed that line. I have no idea how to interpret that statement, but let me pre-emptively make you an offer

I send you SASE w my guru swamp and $5. you write:

vroman stay home
Alan [your last name]

in black sharpie on the swamp and mail it back to me. I will never darken your doorstep again.

[DarkfnTemplar]

 Well to be fair, you had a 1/10 chance of only losing $5 dollars according to illogical probability.
 All this talk about about banning players and low payouts from a monopolizing TO makes me wonder how many vintage players we will be picking up this year. It's almost as if it was better to not have a tournament at all.

 Here's how this convo should have went:
 Vroman: Fuck you pastimes for reasons X,Y,Z.
 Alan: Sorry, we realize this now and we weren't prepared and/or organized. Will do better. Thanks for the feedback. No, I'm not using my witty sarcasm this time.
 Vroman: I won't take back the "fuck you", but I'll consider driving 5 hours and spending $30 on one of your tournaments again.
 Alan: Fair enough.

 Think about this Alan. Every player you ban is one less guru swamp you can buy/trade/sell. It's pretty much a dead weight loss in your guru swamp surplus.
 

[Suicideking]

Alan, 

I respect you for coming here to state your point.  As a Milwaukee player I've attended many of your events in the past.  One event in particular stands out when you put up $400 store credit for a legacy tournament.  9 people showed up and you declined to run the tournament.  You gave out DCI Foil Mogg Fanatics to everyone who came to make up for the cancellation.  I drove 2 hours to come to the event to walk home with a DCI foil.  So I can honestly say you have no problem backing out of a guaranteed prize if you need to to save money. 

That being said, I have no particular problem with the GP tourney.   The head judge was incredibly hard to understand.  Im not going to say anything bigoted about him, but it is a problem to have a head judge for whom the majority of player would have difficulties communicating with.  I'll say nothing about his abilities to interpret the rules, or his character as a person.  I think some one may have been attacking the Judge Nick, who I'm not personally friends with but has always seemed well informed and is friends with a lot of my personal friends, so I'd say those comments are uncalled for.

[Shock Wave]

This.

I respect you for coming here to state your point.  As a Milwaukee player I've attended many of your events in the past.  One event in particular stands out when you put up $400 store credit for a legacy tournament.  9 people showed up and you declined to run the tournament.  You gave out DCI Foil Mogg Fanatics to everyone who came to make up for the cancellation.  I drove 2 hours to come to the event to walk home with a DCI foil.  So I can honestly say you have no problem backing out of a guaranteed prize if you need to to save money.

Answer:  What’s “fair.”  First, please understand what I do for a living… I run events and I sell games.  That is how I pay for my kids to eat and how I pay to put a roof over my family’s head.  That is what I do.  Every week we risk paying for rent, prizes and employees with the hopes to turn a profit so my employees can keep their jobs and I can keep my store.  Sometimes we win… sometimes we lose.   In this forum you guys are deciding what is “fair” for me to make from this event.  In my opinion we gave away about $1100-$1300 in cards (Beta Sapphire, Grim Tutor, a couple Foil Polluted Deltas (I think) and 4 Guru Lands .  If only 15 of you had shown up, would you have been “ok” if I had said, “well – we didn’t get enough people to justify giving away the Beta Sapphire, so here is a Library and a Mana Drain instead.”  I don’t think that would have sat well with you.

....!?

[Demonic Attorney]

Guys, for the most part this has been fine and feel free to continue giving feedback/debating/whatever, but let's try to avoid telling each other to fuck off, or calling each other pedophiles or bitches.  It only serves to detract from the good points raised in the discussion.

[Anusien]

What exactly is the acceptable amount a TO can make on a tournament?  I don't know if Alan's 15-20% or other people's 35-40% are right, but how much is acceptable to the community for a TO to make out of entry fees?

[oneofchaos]

Well considering if your going to an event, the chance you will need singletons for your deck is high.  There is also always the I might buy a new card, booster, sleeves, drink etc factor.  Every tournament you run is like free promotion for your store, you don't need to advertise since your tournament will do that for you.  If you break even at every tournament odds are you are still winning through the purchasing of other products.

[Anusien]

That being said, I have no particular problem with the GP tourney.   The head judge was incredibly hard to understand.  Im not going to say anything bigoted about him, but it is a problem to have a head judge for whom the majority of player would have difficulties communicating with.

Are you saying he was hard to understand because he had a cough/sore throat?  Because I think we all did at that point.

(By the way, so all the facts are on the table, can someone refresh me what the entry fee was and how many players showed?)

Well considering if your going to an event, the chance you will need singletons for your deck is high.  There is also always the I might buy a new card, booster, sleeves, drink etc factor.  Every tournament you run is like free promotion for your store, you don't need to advertise since your tournament will do that for you.  If you break even at every tournament odds are you are still winning through the purchasing of other products.

No.  Ignoring other factors, what percentage of the entry fee is the TO allowed to take in profit?  Fundamentally, that seems to be what this conversation is about.

Edit: There are two factors, what % is okay to take in profit and how much the prizes were worth.  The first is far, far more interesting than the second.

[psu42]

$25 entry, 81 players was the total = $2,025

[oneofchaos]

Anusien- Profit of a store owner off a tournament should be very small if it exists.  First if the event is being run in the store, the overheard won't be as large as it will be elsewhere.  Secondly, before you factor in profit or prizes, deduct the operating cost from the total fee.  Then 80% should be dumped into the prize pool.  That seems fairly reasonable.  The store I sometimes get a chance to play at sometimes loses money, but they are still in business.  Losing money on a few tournaments won't put your store out of business, but having a fairly well known player stage a coup against your tournaments might.  Remember that the vintage community is so small, and a lot of us are on the drain.  Word spreads like wildfire when a TO is hosting shitty tournaments. 

[Anusien]

Yes, but we're dealing with an event where the TO is not running the event in their store, and they are not selling singles.  Thus, we have to ignore those factors.

[oneofchaos]

80% into the prize pool still seems fair to me.  He gets to plaster "Pastimes" all over the venue, advertising is some good I hear .  My friend who doesn't play vintage scrubbed out of the extended tournament and was considering entering and he called me and asked how unreasonable the prize support was.

[Suicideking]

That being said, I have no particular problem with the GP tourney.   The head judge was incredibly hard to understand.  Im not going to say anything bigoted about him, but it is a problem to have a head judge for whom the majority of player would have difficulties communicating with.

Are you saying he was hard to understand because he had a cough/sore throat?  Because I think we all did at that point.

Im saying he was hard to understand because he english didnt seem clear, and I would guess it was because it wasn't his first language.  I don't fault him for this, I'm saying as a player it makes it difficult when you are asking a judge questions and you can't understand their answers.  Again I dont fault him for this and I'm sure he isn't the only person who falls into this category.  If you are correct and his vocal capabilities were just reaching their end because of all the activities of the weekend I can except this.

I would also like to state the idea that the prizes were given away at pastimes store value doesnt make their prizes better.  Like it has been stated earlier, they don't pay nearly what they sell for, and they are essentially getting an extra 30-40% between what they paid and what they value them at as prizes.

[Tha Gunslinga]

No.  Ignoring other factors, what percentage of the entry fee is the TO allowed to take in profit?  Fundamentally, that seems to be what this conversation is about.

I think 20% is a fair amount to take off the top, assuming ebay high end values on the cards.  For example, I would value the prizes they gave away at $700 on the Sapphire (which was supposedly REALLY nice), $100 on Grim Tutor (that was 2nd, right?), $75 each on foil Deltas, and $40 on Guru Swamps (which is a bit high, but not too bad.)   So we get 1110, which is about 50% profit.  Now, we can assume the store bought those cards at something like 400 Sapphire, 50 Grim Tutor, 40-50 each on Deltas, and 15-20 on Guru Swamps.  The margin gets a little better then.

[vassago]

Wow. That is just absurd. The prizing for this event sucked more than my sister at a frat party.  I would certainly be upset with the people who ran it.  I knew about the guru lands, but second place only getting a grim tutor? I would at least thought they would give out some duals or some mana drains or something. Hell even a set of FOWs would have been awesome for an event that size. 

[benthetenor]

2.   Prizes.   I won’t quote anyone from the forums here, but let’s just say that some of you thought they were not “fair”.

Answer:  What’s “fair.”  First, please understand what I do for a living… I run events and I sell games.  That is how I pay for my kids to eat and how I pay to put a roof over my family’s head.  That is what I do.  Every week we risk paying for rent, prizes and employees with the hopes to turn a profit so my employees can keep their jobs and I can keep my store.  Sometimes we win… sometimes we lose.   In this forum you guys are deciding what is “fair” for me to make from this event.  In my opinion we gave away about $1100-$1300 in cards (Beta Sapphire, Grim Tutor, a couple Foil Polluted Deltas (I think) and 4 Guru Lands .  If only 15 of you had shown up, would you have been “ok” if I had said, “well – we didn’t get enough people to justify giving away the Beta Sapphire, so here is a Library and a Mana Drain instead.”  I don’t think that would have sat well with you.

And please consider a couple of other expenses that a store or organizer has when putting on an event…  - the venue and the staff.  There were three judges for this event (not counting the scorekeeper as he was doing other events as well).  The venue was hugely expensive – and yes, there was a big GP to pay for that – but we did not know how many would be there for the GP and we have to count all the events towards the bottom line.  You can also throw in the fact that the Vintage event, as part of the overall event, also cost me for: insurance, clean-up, tables, chairs, P/A and security.  Those were all costs that I incurred when running this event.  And we take all the events income towards those costs. 

I also strongly believe that the majority of what we provide is entertainment.  If you are not playing Magic for fun… you really are in the wrong thing….  So, my guess is that about half of the people reading this or more have gone to see Watchmen (what did you think? Me, about 2 ½ stars).  I know that when I went, I paid $12 for my IMAX ticket and $9 for popcorn and a diet coke – (now you want to talk about unfair!)  So I dropped about $20 for a movie that barely entertained me for two hours.  There was no personal attention.  If I called “judge” during that movie I would have been thrown out!  I left with nothing but a memory from the movie and butter stains on my shirt.  But I knew going in it was a cost of entertainment.  I figured I deserved to take the standee in the lobby as a prize for being there – but silly me, they threatened to call the police!  It sounds to me like most folks had a really good time at the GP and at the Vintage tournament – which is my goal.  Handing out over a thousand dollars of prize seemed like a fun extra!

I know that a lot of stores run events and give back everything in prizes.  I have three comments about that:  1. Look at how many stores have gone out of business in the past 10 years for not worrying about their bottom line.  (Pastimes is now in its 18th year) 2. They are not worried about making money on their event (foolish) , they are just hoping you will buy cards, candy or whatever.  I hope this works for them – it is not my model. 3. When those stores go out of business, you lose places to play.  Support them, they need you and you need them!

As far as handing everything back in prizes, I can’t afford to do this.  You all want events – even big events?  You need organizers who are willing to take a risk and who will put up prizes (umm… there was a Beta Mox Sapphire guaranteed here) and have certified judges etc…  Sometimes we make money on our events, sometime we do not.  (Someone said we made 60% from this event - it actually comes out to about 15-20%)  I look at our event income at the end of the year and hope it is in the black – so that next year I can be back and seeing you at even more fun events!

Basic economic theory. You do what you think you can afford to do, and the general public will respond in kind. What is "fair"? Whatever the market will bear. If you decide to continue to run tournaments with less than 50% payout, that is your prerogative. But you don't get to complain when people call it unfair. There is an objective "fair" out there. If you're running tournaments at significantly below market value, then you're damn right it's unfair. That's the definition.

The Swiss +1 structure is what it is. You advertised it, and lost, by all accounts, quite a few customers because of it. Anyone who entered the tournament knew ahead of time that the tournament structure would be Swiss +1. Honestly, no one who entered the tournament has a right to bitch about the tournament structure, because their entry fee symbolizes their agreement with the tournament structure. Now Alan, you can choose to do whatever you want to do to run your business, but if your customers are freely offering you feedback, then you would be wise to take it. Since you chose to introduce your hungry children into the argument, then these are the people who are feeding your children. I'd advise you not to upset them. If they stop agreeing to pay you to enter your tournaments, then you've got no one to blame but yourself for upsetting them.

The payout was not, however, advertised accurately. Pre-tournament, the prizes were stated to be One Beta Mox Sapphire. Okay. Terrible prize support, but again, you can choose to offer whatever you like. Just before registration closed, I was told that the prize would be one Beta Mox Sapphire, plus prizes to the top 8 equaling ~$500. Okay. What we got was not ~$500; even by the most generous of estimates, I would say closer to $400, only 80% of the advertised number (at best), and conveniently falling on the low side. That merits outrage. Once again, you are getting generous, unsolicited feedback. I would strongly advise you to at least consider the idea that you might not be right, and might be alienating a significant percentage of your customer base. "The customer is always right" isn't just a saying. It's the key to conducting business in a (mostly-)free market.

In the end, it does not matter what we say on this board, all that matters is if we choose to pay for your events in the future. You have chosen to run this tournament in this manner. If you continue to do so, you will probably see your profits dip greatly as people stop attending, since other companies have shown that they can offer greater percentage of payout. That's not the customer's fault, it's a fundamental law of economics. If you want to keep cutting into the profit margin, then that's your choice as well, but you will lose a lot of customers which will, in the long run, seriously affect your profit margin. Not a threat, just a fact.

And a side note on the head judge: we were calling him Kim Jong-Il at the players meeting, long before we had a chance to be disappointed in the outcome of the tournament. It was not a personal assault on him, nor was it us taking our frustration with the tournament on him, but rather a commentary on what he sounded like. He was shouting in an angry-sounding way in English with an Asian accent. I'm sure he's a great person; what he sounds like has nothing to do with that. As a head judge, it was very difficult to understand him. Very. And while we did not call him Kim Jong-Il to his face, I would hope that his self-esteem is not so fragile so that he could not take a joke had we done so. He's a grown man. If he really has a problem with it, then perhaps he has some maturing to do. Real life is way harder than that.

But I don't think that the head judge is the one who has the problem with it. Political correctness at it's best, people.

[dark burn]

Its really funny reading that people are threatening to not support these events any more unless the prize support is much better. You guys just arent getting it.  Pastimes is running their events this way because it works.  If they changed the prize structure they would go out of buisness and would no longer hold tournaments.  Then it wouldnt matter if there were 10, 100, or 1000 vintage players ready to play for 80% prize payout because there would be no tournament for you to play in!

I challenge anyone to start TOing events in the same area as Pastimes and do it sucessfully.  I believe anyone trying would be out of buisness in 2 years.

[BC]

Its really funny reading that people are threatening to not support these events any more unless the prize support is much better. You guys just arent getting it.  Pastimes is running their events this way because it works.  If they changed the prize structure they would go out of buisness and would no longer hold tournaments.  Then it wouldnt matter if there were 10, 100, or 1000 vintage players ready to play for 80% prize payout because there would be no tournament for you to play in!

I challenge anyone to start TOing events in the same area as Pastimes and do it sucessfully.  I believe anyone trying would be out of buisness in 2 years.

They can run tournaments however they want, but I won't be going to them unless the prize support is better.  I speak only for myself.

[Vegeta2711]

I challenge anyone to start TOing events in the same area as Pastimes and do it sucessfully.

Oh good, the 'Nobody can criticize unless they do it better themselves' line of argument / reasoning. Well played sir. I won't bother going into yet another account of why the logic is horrible at best.

Similarly there's no threats being made, just simple statements. They believe the prize support to be shitty, hence they won't be attending anymore until this is rectified. This is called feedback. the owner can choose to do with that what he wishes. Certainly in some cases like this the people are being whiny tools and there's no objective reason why the person should stop what they're doing. On the other hand, if the players make good on their promise and the events start to fail, you have a clear line of reasoning why it's happening.

As for the store owner response, good for you that you made one, but you come off as a bit of a jerk yourself. Here's a little helpful feedback on that.

A:  Guess you should have won first and taken home the Beta Sapphire….

I like this. Be sarcastic to start the response. That will definitely encourage people to take the rest of what you have seriously.(See, I can do the same thing! I bet you won't be in the mood to take the rest of what I say to heart.)

the rest of the response to Vroman

Wow, that was... Heh. I know you don't necessarily have to be nice and courteous in your response to him, seeing as how he already said he isn't coming back, however one would think some level of professionalism would be present in that little retort. SCG is likely the example you want to be following here for well, anything, and I've certainly never seen Pete come back with that sort of vile.

The rest of the post

See, now this is how the whole thing should've been addressed I think. A response of why things were done the way they were without this false dichotomy of blame and excuses.

...

And then we hit the math part, which is usually where everything falls to shit.

(Someone said we made 60% from this event - it actually comes out to about 15-20%)

I'd really love to see the broken down, I really would. I think it would offset a lot of the issues people have with your set-up if you could honestly show how this came about.

[Harlequin]

What exactly is the acceptable amount a TO can make on a tournament?  I don't know if Alan's 15-20% or other people's 35-40% are right, but how much is acceptable to the community for a TO to make out of entry fees?

It's really simple 100% or more in ~retail~ value. 

If you own your own buisness (store or not).  If you are in the buisiness of selling singles the way you make your money is by buying cards at your 'buy' price and selling cards at 'retail' price.  OR opening sealed product for resale as singles.  If you are in the business of selling sealed product you make money by getting cases of product at wholesale and selling it at retail.  Anyone with a basic grasp on textbook capitalism understands this is how these people make money.  Inventory has cost, as well all the other costs for your business including your own salary.  The basic idea is that Inventory + Salary + business cost <= Retail Revenue. 

When you hold an event, every entry fee gets converted into retail revenue (so long as you're giving away singles, product, or store credit).   Think of an average saturday maybe a few people come into the store and buy something, some poeple just browse and leave.  On Event day, ever person walking in the door is basicalling makeing a minimum of a $25 purchase in your store when they pay thier entry fee.

Saying you're going to take additional money of the top is basically the same as saying: Ok I sell Widgets for $20 a peice (never mind how much widgets cost me to make).  But when you come up to the register I take your $20 and then roll a 6 side dice, If I don't roll a 1 you get your widget - but if I roll a one I keep your money and you get nothing.  Then claiming that this 1 in 6 system is how you make 17% "profit."  While it is true profit its simply not a FAIR model. 

Events are guarenteed sales for your retail merchandice.  In addition to that you get all the other 'perks' in the form of side sales, sleeves, food, and advertisement.  Or if you are at another venu, you can sell dealer tables or at very least have the dealers help cover the cost for the venu.  All these side costs and benefits should basically be at least a wash if not slightly in your favor.  But none of these things change the fact that STARTING a day at $2025 in sales is a good start to a day in the life of your business. 

You can only break even if you value your prizes at the price you PAID for them.  Not thier retail values.


It gets tricker when people like Ray hold events.  He's not a dealer, he doesn't own a store.  As far as I know he basically BUYS all the prizes closer to retail price than to 'dealer buy price.'  If someone like him has to skim some off the top, I don't have a problem. 

Its really funny reading that people are threatening to not support these events any more unless the prize support is much better.  Pastimes is running their events this way because it works.  If they changed the prize structure they would go out of buisness and would no longer hold tournaments. 

I think its clear by all the 'business' talk, that they are Merchants after all.  What you see is not always what you get.   I worked in the world of business long enough to know that you can spin anything better or worse.  So I could say they made 75% return, and they could say they lost 10% - and we could even both be able to "Proove" it.  But as George Carlin would say: "Somewhere between 'Live Free or Die' and 'Famous Potatos' is the truth"

[Suicideking]

Its really funny reading that people are threatening to not support these events any more unless the prize support is much better. You guys just arent getting it.  Pastimes is running their events this way because it works.  If they changed the prize structure they would go out of buisness and would no longer hold tournaments.  Then it wouldnt matter if there were 10, 100, or 1000 vintage players ready to play for 80% prize payout because there would be no tournament for you to play in!

I challenge anyone to start TOing events in the same area as Pastimes and do it sucessfully.  I believe anyone trying would be out of buisness in 2 years.

Well in the Milwaukee/Chicago area Astro City games, Xtreme Games, Ben Carp, and a new store in Bayview Milwaukee have all started running events  and with a few exceptions get as good if not better numbers then pastimes and give much better prize support.  Xtreme Games for example gives away 100% of what they take in because they view running a tournament as if they're selling all those cards and they do make money from other items.  

[vroman]

this whole thing has turned in to a much bigger shit storm than I expected. we've all said our piece. the results will be tested by the performance of the next pastimes vintage events. until then, unless anyone has anything else to say about ubastax or the actual magic played at this tournament, then I move that this meeting be adjourned.

[Anusien]

And a side note on the head judge: we were calling him Kim Jong-Il at the players meeting, long before we had a chance to be disappointed in the outcome of the tournament. It was not a personal assault on him, nor was it us taking our frustration with the tournament on him, but rather a commentary on what he sounded like. He was shouting in an angry-sounding way in English with an Asian accent. I'm sure he's a great person; what he sounds like has nothing to do with that. As a head judge, it was very difficult to understand him. Very. And while we did not call him Kim Jong-Il to his face, I would hope that his self-esteem is not so fragile so that he could not take a joke had we done so. He's a grown man. If he really has a problem with it, then perhaps he has some maturing to do. Real life is way harder than that.

But I don't think that the head judge is the one who has the problem with it. Political correctness at it's best, people.

Actually, he's since been clued into this thread and expressed his unhappiness with some of the things being said in here for sure.

By the way, did you actually just say, "If you can't take a racial epithet as a joke, grow up?"

[benthetenor]

And a side note on the head judge: we were calling him Kim Jong-Il at the players meeting, long before we had a chance to be disappointed in the outcome of the tournament. It was not a personal assault on him, nor was it us taking our frustration with the tournament on him, but rather a commentary on what he sounded like. He was shouting in an angry-sounding way in English with an Asian accent. I'm sure he's a great person; what he sounds like has nothing to do with that. As a head judge, it was very difficult to understand him. Very. And while we did not call him Kim Jong-Il to his face, I would hope that his self-esteem is not so fragile so that he could not take a joke had we done so. He's a grown man. If he really has a problem with it, then perhaps he has some maturing to do. Real life is way harder than that.

But I don't think that the head judge is the one who has the problem with it. Political correctness at it's best, people.

Actually, he's since been clued into this thread and expressed his unhappiness with some of the things being said in here for sure.

By the way, did you actually just say, "If you can't take a racial epithet as a joke, grow up?"

If his feelings are really hurt, then I'm sorry. But I stand by my statement that this had nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with the difficulty that we experienced in trying to understand just what the HEAD JUDGE was trying to say. If I was wrong for having a problem with being unable to understand the HEAD JUDGE, then I'm sorry for that, too.

This criticism has nothing to do with our head judge and everything to do with Pastimes. If the head judge was really offended, then I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire. But honestly. Honestly? Welcome to America. We celebrate our differences. Take a joke.

[vroman]

racial epithet

fact: the guy looked and sounded alarmingly like a certain korean dictator. I will never apologize for this being funny to me.

[Gaagooch]

If I recall correctly, and I know that I am not wrong, not so long ago we New England Vintage players were having a discussion just like this in regards to prize support from our local tournaments.  The only reason this discussion happened is because we as a community don't want to see our format killed by greedy people just looking for money.  Yes Alan, you mentioned that you need to make sure you have money to feed your family, and pay your staff, but remember a large portion of us playing in your event are taking time off work and paying you money for such.  I used to play in every vintage tournament hosted in my area, my area being pretty much anywhere in New England.  However, I stopped going to all vintage tournaments that popped up when I received $66 for SPLITTING THE FINALS of a 40+ man tournament.  I will not mention who ran the tournament or where it happened, because that is the T.O.'s decision.  The tournament itself cost $25, add in gas and food for this particular event, food being a sit down restaurant to celebrate the split, and on the day I ended up losing $15.  Why am I going to attend tournaments where even when I do well and come in first or second, my overall prize is still negative money.  That seems counter-intuitive.

In summation, you are going to run events the way you want to run events.  We as a community cannot change that, however, we are trying to give you advice on running tournaments so that your turnouts not only give you money for your staff, and family, but also gives back enough money to the tournament attendees that it is worth it.  Obviously I have never run a tournament, so I don't know what goes into them, or how much they actually cost to run.  I can also not give you the magic cut percentage that would make people not only attend your tournaments regularly, and make you money.  I start thinking about it in terms of is it worth it to me to show up, if I top 8 or top 4 what amount of money do I stand to make.  If I'm looking at a top 8 or top 4 split that in the end still costs me money on the day when all is said and done, thanks for having a tournament, I won't be attending.