The Florida Sandstorm Prerelease charged a $15 entry fee. 62 in total registered. Thus $930 earned in registration. 11 boxes required for deck construction. I do not know how much cases and boxes were sold to the organizer. So I have no clue if 11 boxes PLUS around 7 boxes for prize support would cover the $930 earned for charging $15. But if anything... lower prices attract younger players.
Saturdays by far are choice days to run any tournament. Perhaps your events end earlier, but we try to cram in as many side events following the main event for all those wishing to continue to play. Late nights on Sundays are killer for those who have to wake up early on Monday for work or school. Scheduling an event on Saturday versus Sunday allows the tournament organizer a day before the scheduled due date of results on Monday (following previous primere event procedures). The time could be allocated to sorting out results and filling out paperwork. And uh, off topic, but hope you're doing good on that today Mrs. Craig.
Running any event requires a substantial amount of advertising. A "If you build it, they will come." approach will not always work. Send out flyers to Local Stores and your state's Pokemon Leagues. Set up a mailing list, offline and online, for local players interested in recieving info on upcoming tournaments. Advertise on Pokemon sites and Message Boards. Set up you're own event website for players to find local information, such sites as PokemonFlorida.com IPGeek21.com and PokemonLeagues.com already do such operations.
Modified Events following Prerelease Tournaments run fairly well, experience with new cards in the current format. We had seventeen sign up for an unofficial Modified Tournament following the Sandstorm Prerelease in Orlando. Prizes depend on the amount of players. $5 is the highest I would go for any Constructed Event, excluding Team. If you are interested in running a Modified Tournament during the main prerelease, consider starting it a bit after the main event has started so that if rounds run together. Both will end at nearly the same time so then future small events will have a larger audience and fresh decks.
Booster Drafts are ideal for small amounts of players interested in side events. These are usually the pro players, the veterans, who are interested in spending a bundle on some sealed competition. Pods usually run eight, but we have pulled off six players. Consider this for late arrivers to the main event or near the end of the day when the number of participants starts to suffer. Price depends on the number of packs... six or five. Note that older sets have 11 cards while newer ones have 9. Also remember that some booster packs contain energy cards in place of another card. Prizes for this event might want to differ from the packs drafted, unless it is a new release.
Basically, players want the new release of cards in any side event. It's safer odds to offer that over an older set that most players have already.
Gameboy and TCG side events should remain seperate. Do not mix. Nobody will sign up. It just causes conflicts with both players. However a Gameboy side event is not a bad idea and attracts those who wish to switch to another game. Experienced staff for the tournament is not needed, simply get the players prepared, start them, record results, report results, and pair for next round. At our Florida Prerelease we offered a Gameboy Tournament, although lack of interest hindered the tournament. I think we had like seven? Gift certificates to various electronic stores, Toys R Us, Pokemon Center, etc would be note worthy prizes. Gameboy Accessories and the upcoming ecards used for the Ruby and Sapphire games should also be considered.
What should be added? Well a large staff to cover the event. One judge for each age group in the Prerelease Tournament, an individual to work the tournament program on a computer, someone to run a shop if you are selling Pokemon items, and additional judges for side events if they conflict with the main event. Tournament Organizers must always be on hand and they pick up work if needed. TOs should really not try to control everything. Let you're staff go and do what they need to do. Just make it clear to them what their responsabilities are and always consider yourself open for questions from the staff and from those in attendance. TOs should NOT be a source for players to go to debate a head judge's ruiling. Head judge's ruilings are final and in most cases the TO is not involved with the judging of the event. If he/she is, then communication between the judges over the ruling should be held.
Another thing I'd like to see is a new Tournament Program. That crappy beta version should have NEVER been used in a Primere Event! We had a script error at the end of the 11-14 tournament and Randy, our computer man, had to manually reenter ALL of the results for 11-14. We were lucky to have already finalized and printed the results from other age groups or they would have been lost too.
Another complaint about the software is that when printing rankings, the computer switches the Tie Breaker from percentages to decimals. So Billy might have a
64% but then next round see
.34. That makes no sense.
And match slips! There were no match slips! For the love of all that is holy we need match slips! Do you know what we had to do? We had to take the pairings sheet and record wins/losses/ties on that sheet. Then we had to get both player's signatures next to their names on the right column of the sheet. Meanwhile Randy, the computer dude, had nothing to do the entire round. This resulted in longer periods of time in between rounds since Randy had no access to the results until the end of the tournament versus having individual results added mostly before thirty minutes ended.
Conflicting the tournament again was the crappy registration sheets. Here's a solution:
-Front Side: List the contents of your deck on a form similar to that of DCI Deck Sheets, not some checklist.
-Back Side: Have a checklist of the entire set and require players to write the number of each card they recieved in their pack.
Both sides should have clearly written instructions. Our 10-Under age group had so much trouble with Nintendo's poor excuse of deck sheets. Don't worry higher ups... we wont let one deck checklist leave the builiding. We're already starting a bonfire of the unused ones, because they lack ANY common sense. Nobody would use them anyways if they got their hands on them. Besides if the problem is releasing the contents of the set too early, well, I'm afraid most of the internet knew that a few hours after the first round of events. Do not even bother trying to regulate this, its going to get out.
-Phil
