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I had the unfortunate experience of attending the New England Regional Championships this year. Why was the experience unfortunate? It was a combination of the logistics of the event and my attitude toward those logistics. The fact that the tournament started significantly later than scheduled, the long line of walk-in registrations, the announcement that the tournament would be nine rounds of swiss, and an error in the first round pairings all led to my having a losing day before the first card was drawn.
Rather than be one of those types who complain about things without doing anything to improve them, I'm making some suggestions on how I think Regionals (and in a sense, all large tournaments) could be improved. These are just brainstorms; they may or may not be feasible, and they may or may not make sense. They are, nonetheless, banging on the inside of my skull trying to get out of my brain and into this article.
- Make Preregistration Mandatory.
- Regionals Should Be For Players Sixteen And Older.
- The Mandatory Number Of Swiss Rounds Should Be Flexible, Changing As More People Drop.
- For Large Events, Run Two Simultaneous Tournaments.
- Split Up The Regions.
A lot of time was wasted on walk-in registrations. The tournament may have actually started on time, or close to it, if everyone was registered and in the computer ahead of time.
I might get some backlash for this one, but I base this on two facts: The first being that the larger number of players, the longer the day. If fifty of those players are eight- to twelve-year olds who are going to drop out after the third round anyway, what's the point? Also, people who are age fifteen and younger have plenty of Junior Super Series qualifiers to play in, and those are events that I can not play in because of my age. If you can place an age restriction on one event, why not the other?
The number of swiss rounds that are required is set at the tournament start and is based upon the number of participants. If a hundred of those people drop by round 4 or 5, then the tournament organizer should be allowed to adjust the number of swiss rounds accordingly.
Make the day shorter by randomly assigning half of the participants to a"tournament A" and the other half to a"tournament B," with the top 4 in each section receiving the invites.
If sanctioned Magic tournaments continue to gain in popularity (and Wizards has been pushing for this lately), then the time may have come to add more regions to alleviate the stress on some regions. It will also prevent some people from having to drive three or four hours to their nearest event. Perhaps a Northern New England and a Southern New England region? Some states may be large enough to be their own region.
Next year, I may just travel to a region that had a hundred or so participants and play there. Even if I lose, I still may be home and in bed before my local Regional is finished!!!
