I Don’t Play Magic Anymore: A report from a Tournament Organizer at RIT

[Rancorous Fool]

I Don’t Play Magic Anymore: A report from a Tournament Organizer at RIT

Hello all,
This is a report about not playing magic. A TO is a Tournament Organizer. We put together the space, prizes, and promotion that lead to successful and fun events for everyone. As James put it best: Running tournaments is the first step towards quitting magic. I am fairly new to being a TO, as I started a little over six months ago. I have been a long time magic player and an avid legacy player. I passed my judge test just a week before this tournament and the prizes came out of my own collection.

This is a tournament report from the TO of a medium sized event held at RIT with approximately 55 people. You can find the original posting here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ats-Guaranteed
and here:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=259674

Thanks to everyone to came out to the tournament I ran at RIT on the 11th. I hope it was great fun for all involved. Hopefully we can run similar or larger tournaments in the future. Thanks especially to Eli from Jupiter Games, who sweetened the “Double Mox, Double Moat” with championship points for his excellent tournament series. Ryan, also of Jupiter Games stepped away from his dealer booth to help judge the tournament and make sure things ran smoothly. Your help was much appreciated.

The tournament on the 11th was my first midsize tournament as a TO. As such, there were a few hiccups in the event that were entirely preventable and my fault. I got into running tournaments because I was on the receiving end of a significant theft. Last December, I had the guts of pro-bant: duals, fetchs, forces, goyfs, etc stolen out of my deck box while at a local $5 tournament. It’s not an uncommon tale, but along with a few others we have created a safer place to play. We almost run weekly Legacy tournaments with guaranteed dual lands to first place. I also had 6 security cameras set up throughout the room at the tournament on the 11th. I am glad we did not need to use them.

Preparatory work:
First: Finding players, making sure they know about your tournaments. I knew I was also limited to Rochester as my venue city. Rochester is not as centrally located for the East Coast as Syracuse or Bighampton. The sometimes attendees from NYC, Boston, Baltimore, Albany, etc are unlikely to be able to attend. No matter how much I promote, it’s unlikely that it will be worth the drive for these players.
So, the target for this event is almost entirely upstate New York with a possible showing from PA, Ontario, and Ohio. We did in fact have a crew come down from Ontario. I saw forum posts from Cleveland players, but I am not sure I saw them in attendance. Correct me if I am wrong.

Second: A time and place. I found a venue- I have a relationship with RIT already. They provided a beautiful space for us and in fact even donated additional prize support to help boost visibility in target audiences (Magic Players are smarter people on average).

I selected the 11th, as there appeared to be no other major tourneys on the same day. Unfortunately, I was quite wrong as there were two other medium sized legacy tournaments this day and Waterbury, one of the largest vintage tournaments every year. Additionally to a GP in the US, attracting all the level 2s and pros in the area and a bachelor party in Syracuse. For the other mid-sized tourneys its hard to say who announced first or even if we should avoid having events on the same day.

PLUG: The MS in Innovation Management program at RIT is a tough program that puts a high value on strategic thinking, hence their support for Magic tournaments. The stats are silly high on the program with an average 6-Figure starting salary, required comparable test scores to Harvard, and scholarship money available. Scholarships for business/engineering graduate programs are nearly unheard of now-a-days.

Third: I started promoting. I used ad words and posted a semi-regular stream of bumps into appropriate forums. But, the entirety of internet posting is not going to compare to real buzz. So, I talked to people; a lot. I went to every major tournament for two months before mine and was sure to plug it in nearly every conversation I had. I am sure my friend’s (if I still have any :-P) were perturbed a little by my steering every trade conversation and every match I played against an opponent towards telling them about the upcoming RIT Event. I think there is probably a better way to promote. I picked Double Mox, Double Moat as the prizes, and I think it was catchy enough. Though, everyone took the buy-backs. So I kept the cards themselves. Thoughts on this matter would be appreciated greatly.

Site preparation:
I knew the space fairly well already, so I came in the night before and set up the tables. I numbered them out for 120 players (just in case). This turned out to be unnecessary, so during round 1 we spaced out the numbering more, so that the players would have more room. I did not hear any specific complaints or thanks about this happening before or after- so I assume this was fine.

I utilized four projectors for pairings, standing, and round timer with a printer as backup. The projectors worked beautifully and did away with the clogging at pairings often seen at large events. I think this extreme level of visibility really smoothed things along and took the guessing game out of finding your seating. I will continue to use it in the future. For anyone interested, it was the same software used by Legion Events.

I was doubly-sure to check out local food options. We were directly adjacent to a cafeteria with an ATM and a food court. It was my impression that this made food highly accessible. Again I did not hear complaints or sighs of satisfaction, so I am unsure of the exact opinions of players.

Day Of:
I showed up early, made sure everything got set up properly and started taking sign-ups. Thanks again to those local players that brought coffee, helped do some last minute tuning and arranging of table numbers.

Round 1: We got started on time. As a player I find it unmistakably rude for a TO to start late. I have been at events where the TO is not even on site til half-way through sign-ups and then the tournament runs slowly all day. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, certain, even marginal levels of professionalism can take 2-3 hours off of mid-size events.

The mispairing explained. Technically, it was not a mispairing per se. I entered the wrong information into the tournament projection software so it listed the wrong pairings. I did not actually re-pair every one; rather I just corrected my input mistake. This hiccup cost us about 7-10 minutes. It was my worst mistake of the day and one I will not repeat. Thanks for being patient with me on this one.

Round 2: Things went smoothly. People seem to be having fun. I answered some judge calls. They were nothing hard too hard. The most interesting was resolving a stack for a match in which there were a total of 13 effects currently waiting to resolve. We had a lunch break after round 2. Perhaps this added complacency lead to my mistake in round 3.

Round 3: An embarrassing but harmless mistake. I mistyped the number of rounds when beginning the tournament. For the life of me I could not remember where to change the number of rounds in the software. After 5-10 minutes of toying and a much needed assist, we got that fixed and on to round 4.

That’s two 10 minute delays in a tournament. As a player I might have been slightly annoyed. Nobody has expressed undue unhappiness about it to me, though.

Round 4-6 These rounds went smoothly, and quickly. We ended round 6 at 5:25. 6 Rounds + 30 minute lunch break in 6 and-a-half hours. Not too shabby considering with a mid-size tournament someone goes to time every round. I think the projectors helped immensely with this. Also, there was a very high level of play considering the size of the event with 5k winners and many competitive legacy regulars in attendance.

Running the top8:
The top8 was smooth as butter. I gave 5 minutes to discuss a split and 75 minute rounds (we had a building time limit- or I would have gone with an un-timed top8). They self-paired before I even got the pairings up and the spectators were fine. There were no disruptions other than a well-deserved fit of laughter from a ridiculous EDH game.

I have been at tournaments when the store is trying to finish up and hurry out the top8, even resorting to throwing everyone that is not playing out of the store. From the perspective of having been that player stuck hanging around outside a store waiting to give your friend a ride home- that’s totally ridiculous. A TO should be able to accurately gauge how much time a tournament will take if the top8 plays out and account for it.

With that I gave out prizes, which were promptly sold back! It seems people prefer cash to Moxes and Moats. In future events, I will take this into consideration.

Also, if you received 13th-16th place prizes- thank the MSIM program, they paid for your prizes.


Future events:
On December 3rd, RIT is hosting Rudicon, a yearly gaming and anime convention. The upstate convention scene has been dwindling some over the past few years and I think we can spice this one up a little with, at minimum, a Double 1k. $1,000 in prizes Saturday and Sunday. Saturday: Standard Sunday: Legacy. Much of this is still TBD

Ultimately, at a Convention we will need to provide as much value as possible to vendors and as much enjoyment as possible for attendees. If anyone has experience or advice, I want to read it. I suppose that also means I am about to get trolled.



Props:
Chris who brought coffee
Aaron and Jon who directed about 15 lost cars
Josh, who taped down numbers while still drunk from the night before
Ryan (who was also staffing a booth for Jupiter Games) for fielding judge calls and generally providing a helping hand.
Chuck for proctoring my judge test
Andrew for fixing the projectors
Spencer for bringing 6 cases of arnold palmer
James R for getting a late night 4 pack draft going
The Innovation Center and MSIM programs for supporting competitive Magic.
Everyone who turned out to help make the event such a success.

Slops:
RIT’s maze of roads delaying a few cars

[chinEsE girl]

As a player who was playing all day up, including top 8;

-The projector was really helpful. Sure there were some hiccups with the technology, but the ease of just looking up and waiting a few seconds for you pairing to show up was really nice. It also made it really easy to double check you pairing, just waiting about 10 seconds for it to scroll by again. I know a lot of events don't have the space to do this, but for those that do and have the proper equipment its a sweet idea I'd love to see other TOs use.
-Also props to the person who came up with the idea to sell 24oz arnold palmer cans for a buck. Whoever came up with that idea was a genius. Everywhere I go you can never get drinks for reasonable prices, and finally having a 24oz drink for only a dollar was amazing. Please do that at all your events from now till the end of time.
-I know New York players and other northeast legacy players get spoiled by how awesome the jupiter games legacy tourney circuit is, but this was still a well run tournament, a lot better than others I've been to. So there were a few mistakes, that happens the first time you ever do anything. I also like the fact your noting what went wrong/could have gone better and are making strides to change that stuff for the better. If only all TOs could do this, then every tournament could just be awesome.

Overall great job on your first midsized tournament, can't wait for you to host another.