Why do people not like unlimited qualifying?

I analyzed two years of data for CAX, and the general pattern is that the ones spending the most money are the people who don’t get into the finals. Nobody really buys their way in, there may be some question amongst the people in the bottom 2-3 spots, but generally yes all the same people get in regardless of limited vs unlimited. You will often see many of the high ranked players continuing to crank tickets after they’ve qualified, but they are not buying their way into finals, they’re trying to get into the bye spots. If someone wants to argue that people can buy their way into byes, then that might be worth talking about, but nobody says that.

The problem, in my mind, is not about people buying their way in. It is about a combination of two things

  • People who aren’t extremely high level players, but are still very good, want to get into finals and feel like if they can just hit that one good game they’ll be good. I suffer from this all the time in Herb format tournaments. Of course I can put up 10B on Attack, I’ve done it a million times! I just need to get that one solid game out. BAM there goes another $20. If you don’t have the discipline to set a fixed budget and stick to it regardless of results, then its so easy to fall down that rabbit hole. That is why the people 1-15 off the bubble spend the most.
  • This leads to a situation where the people who don’t make the finals are funding the huge awards for the people who do, which is kind of like pouring salt on the wounds. Not only did you not make it, all the money ended up in the hands of @sk8ball.

Limited entry evens all those things out. It forces the budget onto everyone, and it flattens the award donation across the whole event. This is great for the 80% of players who do not make the finals, and that is really a more valid reason why people might prefer Limited (although any of those players could treat Unlimited as if it was Limited by simply setting a fixed budget and being done with it.) Of course it totally sucks for the top players who travel more to events and want the big pots to be able to justify their expenses.

We did Limited at CAX this year and the prize pool took a pretty huge hit. I know some people weren’t thrilled about it, we’ll have to see next year how much difference that makes. Ultimately I think the choice between Limited vs Unlimited comes to the TD: What are the goals of your tournament? What kind of vibe do you want your tournament to have? Who do you want your tournament to be for? If you haven’t sat down and thought through those questions before choosing a format, then I feel like you’re kind of doing it wrong.

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Provided that you have a lot of participants (usually achieved by a tourney connected to a festival/expo), fixed entry can still provide a substantial prize purse. TPF 2016 had a $60 fixed entry fee, and at 160 players, that yielded a $9600 tourney purse prior to expenses.

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Here’s the breakdown for CAX 2015 (Unlimited) vs 2016 (Limited)

2015: 155 players, $6500 prize pool
2016: 137 players, $40 fixed for 20 entries, $4000 prize pool

Note that the prize pool is what was left after we paid for trophies as well as the fixed prizes for B/Kids division winners. Also, we gave comped entries to volunteers and scorekeepers which reduces the prize pool even further. Finally, in 2015, we paid $20 to the top score on each game which we removed when we went limited. So really the prize pool for 2015 had an extra $250 on top.

I think to some extent the drop in players was due to a combination of us moving away from the main hall and casual people thinking that $40 was too much to drop to enter. We might add a $20/10 option next year for that, but then I’m worried that top 10 players will choose to only do that and then we aren’t really helping the prize pool at all because it balances out.

The most interesting thing to me about the limited experiment to me was how many people still didn’t play out all 20 of their entries. I don’t have those numbers handy but I’m fine with @kdeangelo posting them if he wants to dig it up. Part of me was thinking that we might go to $60/30 next year but if people aren’t even doing 20 and the lines were still awful then I’m not sure what benefit it would have. The only way it might make sense is if we extended quaifying time which I’m having a hard time making work in the schedule.

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Limited, unlimited, doesn’t matter to me. If it costs me 50 to play or 150 to play, doesn’t matter to me. But, if in order to qualify I have to wait in lines for two days straight, that sucks big time. If I want to put in a qualifying game, I want my wait time to be no longer than if I was walking up to a free play game in the show.

One of the reason why pinburgh is amazing is because there is limited to no waiting.

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You must not have been in a group with Jorian while he’s blowing up ____________ .

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Haha. There’s a difference to me between waiting in a line to play a game alone than playing in a group and watching in awe as another member of your group is killing it.

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THIS.

I find it pretty frustrating either way.

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I really wish the Match Play at the Lake tournament ran at CaEx instead. So much more fun than standing in line…

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Do you think that format would work for 150 people? It seems predicated on there being a reasonably manageable number of players/games.

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Yeah one of the positive comments I received from people at CAX was that the limited entries allowed them to walk away and enjoy the rest of the show. Changing up to a match play format would eliminate that, which doesn’t really seem to be what people want (from what I’ve heard.) Also as @jay says, I’m not sure where the games come from. We have a huge struggle just getting 12 games, and this year we lost two in the middle, plus the space issues. Seems to be a rough call for an event of our size.

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It would not work for 150 people no. But if 75 of the 150 were just playing their free entry it doesn’t really matter. PS the show has become a joke. I tried a few different times to go in and it was so crowded I just went to the bar instead lol. Its like trying to cram pinburgh into The old Northwest championships building at this point…

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I ended up killing 3 hours or so, on sunday, shooting the left loop on Vegas. For some reason, that was the only game I could find that I never had to wait for. And there were two to choose from. :smirk:

For 75 people you still need 20 games to do a PATL style tournament. That could work (and would be awesome) but the Bay Area community would have to step up and provide tournament ready games to the event to make it happen. It seems like (from talking with people that have been attending for a number of years) getting games for CAX has been an ongoing problem.

Seems like @sk8ball is saying that the issue is space, not games. Too many people, not enough space? What recommendations do you have for improving the show? What might a match-play tournament look like? (the NWPAS format?)

75 of the 150 people playing free entry? That made no sense. What did you mean by this?

For me and the two guys I came up with, this was just a matter of time. We didn’t have enough time to play up all 20 of our entries. We went down into the show for the first hour or two, then straight to the tournament where we were able to get in line and play about 16 of our entries. Wasn’t that we didn’t want to play all 20…just that the time didn’t allow for it.

No recommendations because I don’t really hang out at shows anymore. I squeezed in there to buy some parts from vendors but that’s pretty much it.

Means I am guessing 50% of the people who played didn’t use all 20 entries or even plan on playing sunday morning. They just wanted to check out the tourney area and get WPPR participation points :wink:

They aren’t?

CAX 2016 unused entry data:

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20 unused entries. Yeah!

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if I understand @kdeangelo table I think it’s more like 366 entries unused?