How to deal with events that are too successful

There is a conversation going on in the pintastic thread and similar conversations happened in other tournaments. Many events are suffering from their on success. Getting too big means players can play as much as they want, lines are too big. Throw out your general ideas here.

I think the old papa world championship solved this the best of anywhere. They used divisions, and somehow made people want to play in the lower division they were eligible for. People don’t want to segment qualifying because it kills the WPPRtunity, but given enough machines it might be the best option.

I will throw out another option Tadman was considering. Reserved 4 (or whatever) hour windows. You play your 4 hours in 4 hours instead of stretched over 2 days.

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Same suggestions you’ll see in the other thread:

More games, more divisions, longer qualifying hours, cap on players

These seem to be your best options, mix and match. Really depends upon what you are trying to do.

For us at NYCPC, more games helped (12 rather than 10 this year). Someone did the math, and to ensure maximum pumpage (ie: most money and shortest lines) 16 games apparently would be ideal. There’s always going to be limitations on what you can do (games available, space, etc) but it just doesn’t help anybody to have a line on a game be an hour long. I was at a tournament this year where classics lines were reaching 18 and 19, it was unbearable and frustrating.

This is reminding me why I stopped traveling for tournaments that require waiting in line. I’ll travel far and wide for high level matchplay formats, but all the waiting around and stressing to maximize plays per hour sucks the fun out of the experience for me. I’ll make an exception here and there for a limited entry thing or if the event has some other kind of draw, but on the whole I’m pretty much over it.

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Does someone want to try running a 5 min drill pump and dump qualifying?

This exactly. I’d rather spend big up front and be able to enjoy my time at the show like Trent does expo.

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I dont see how its a given that events getting too big means players can play as much as they want, just set a format where everyone plays for example two attempts on X games, either in one or several banks. Both attempts count. Solved =)

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One of the reasons I stopped going to larger events as well. Too much time sitting in lines and not enjoying an events other offerings.

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A lot of events have changed to limited entry. If too limited I refuse to travel for such events, because I don’t enjoy the time not playing. It is more fun to compete.

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The law of supply and demand . . . raise prices until you get to an interest level that suits the other variables you have to work through with your event.

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Also a way to solve the issue then, if people refuse to travel due to limited number of attempts :slight_smile:

I’m not sure what the problem with long lines are if you get to electronically queue AND get a push notification when you’re next up. You can enjoy the show while you wait… I’d much rather travel to somewhere with the illusion of “unlimited attempts” (even if lines and time ends up making it limited) just because I like being able to “waste” entries experimenting with different things, and to get comfortable on the games. Luckily, most limited entry tournaments I have flown out to have adequate number of tries, otherwise I would most likely not fly out to a Euro-style tournament where you get one try on each game and maybe one mulligan.

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What I’d try to consider - regardless of what the format is - is how many plays I can reasonably get in in a qualifying period. Recently, match play style events where I’d get ~12 games at max during qualifying have been kind of a curse to me lately. Pinburgh with 40 games in qualifying smooths out a lot of the volatility inherent in the match play format.

Limited Entry. Or do the time-slot match play like @dbs runs at NWPAS

Maybe the wrong thread but throwing it out there. I’d like to play in a double elimination type tournament sometime. Example:

  • Set max number of players (in this example 64)
  • Their are 12 games. 4 in Modern, SS and EM.
  • All players play the game one time and get points based off score. 100, 99, 98, 97, etc.
  • Add up scores for all 12 games. This creates your ranking.
  • Brackets created, (1, 32, 33, 64), (2, 31, 34, 63), etc…
  • top 2 finishers get the win. bottom 2 lose
  • Losers go to loser bracket and winners stay in winners bracket.

Think, baseball, soccer, football, etc type tournaments. If time permits could do more than double elimination.

Don’t know how this could impact overall playing time but it should help pair down qualifier times and keep people playing like they do in match play. I just don’t think limited entry itself is the answer. For instance, look at TPF this year. Limited entry but still LONG waits between games.

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Or time slot head-to-Head round robin — very common in Europe, and very fun.

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Can you elaborate a little more on this format?

I don’t think that’s the case really. If Silverball Rumble had a B division on separate machines, the same great players would pick A. The WPPRtunity ends at 64 players. Pretty sure at the last PAPA 20, there were over 100 people in A division.

This sounds good in theory but it’s depressing in practice. You’re actually not free to enjoy the show while you wait. If the notification doesn’t get to you right away, by the time you arrive back at the lines, they’ve passed you up.

You’re in this constant state of anxiety. Even if you can physically step away for a why, it’s still a burden.

It’s definitely better than not having a virtual queue though.

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