Changes to the SCG Opens in 2015

[ESG]

That's the rumor I heard as well, although if your Grand Prix gets over 4000 players for the main event alone, you overpromised if you had to refund some money to vendors.

That's an interesting rumor. I know in one of the CEDTalks podcasts that Patrick Sullivan was guessing a lower number for the turnout and thought there was no way there would be close to 4,000 people. Cedric felt there would be 4,000 or more. I don't know how privy to information they are. I agree that if 4,000 was a disappointment, then SCG overpromised.

Edit: I tracked it down. In the Nov. 5 podcast, "Broken in Oakland," at 30:27 Cedric and Patrick give their GP New Jersey attendance predictions. Patrick says, "I would be shocked if we got anywhere approaching Vegas numbers, just because of card availability." Cedric says he thinks turnout will break 4,500. Patrick says, "I would consider breaking 3,000, for a Legacy grand prix, to be an enormous success."

[Darkenslight]

That's an interesting rumor. I know in one of the CEDTalks podcasts that Patrick Sullivan was guessing a lower number for the turnout and thought there was no way there would be close to 4,000 people. Cedric felt there would be 4,000 or more. I don't know how privy to information they are. I agree that if 4,000 was a disappointment, then SCG overpromised.

Edit: I tracked it down. In the Nov. 5 podcast, "Broken in Oakland," at 30:27 Cedric and Patrick give their GP New Jersey attendance predictions. Patrick says, "I would be shocked if we got anywhere approaching Vegas numbers, just because of card availability." Cedric says he thinks turnout will break 4,500. Patrick says, "I would consider breaking 3,000, for a Legacy grand prix, to be an enormous success."

It seems obvious that one of the largest GPs was overpromised if that was disappointing, and someone majorly fucked-up.

[lordofthepit]

First Standard $20K Open of 2015 brings 659 players into Columbus. That's lower than all three Standard ($10K) Opens of 2014 (Jan, 688; June, 705; Nov, 757) in Columbus. Probably much lower than what SCG was hoping for, but unfortunately, not likely to be low enough to be embarrassing enough for them to go back on this new setup.

My preference is for them to go back to Saturday Standard and Sunday Legacy Opens, each with $10K, but hopefully the first Legacy $20K Open gives them enough reason to have nearly 50% Legacy Opens on schedule if they decide to maintain this new format.

[Cynicath]

First Standard $20K Open of 2015 brings 659 players into Columbus. That's lower than all three Standard ($10K) Opens of 2014 (Jan, 688; June, 705; Nov, 757). Probably much lower than what SCG was hoping for, but unfortunately, not likely to be low enough to be embarrassing enough for them to go back on this new setup.

My preference is for them to go back to Saturday Standard and Sunday Legacy Opens, each with $10K, but hopefully the first Legacy $20K Open gives them enough reason to have nearly 50% Legacy Opens on schedule if they decide to maintain this new format.

Thanks for the update! Where do you get the attendance figures from? I'd like to be able to stay up to date on this stuff but I'm not sure where to look.

[lordofthepit]

Thanks for the update! Where do you get the attendance figures from? I'd like to be able to stay up to date on this stuff but I'm not sure where to look.

I look at the SCG standings for each round. Usually, they'll wait until after R2 to post R1 standings to allow for late entries to be reflected (no late entries are allowed after R2). I'll often check standings for R1 and a later round just to confirm they are consistent, since they carry players over even after they are dropped; occasionally, a player gets disqualified, and this is reflected by that player no longer being shown for subsequent rounds.

I've gone through every single Open since Richmond in February 2009 and saved them to an Excel spreadsheet; exceptions are for the five Standard Opens between 10/10/2012 and 11/17/2012, because all of the links for those Opens are dead and I didn't think to keep track of attendance figures for non-Legacy events until later (after the website crashed).

I can probably post the actual data after I get Legacy and Modern PIQ data this weekend.

[Beatusnox]

Honestly, I know that myself and a few other legacy players at my local played predominantly legacy, and if we traveled to an event, we would play standard day 1 for something to do, and legacy day 2 was our focus. So they would gain us as players for standard simply because we were looking for something to do, and I am fairly certain that many times the opposite was true as well.

[Meekrab]

First Standard $20K Open of 2015 brings 659 players into Columbus. That's lower than all three Standard ($10K) Opens of 2014 (Jan, 688; June, 705; Nov, 757) in Columbus. Probably much lower than what SCG was hoping for, but unfortunately, not likely to be low enough to be embarrassing enough for them to go back on this new setup.

My preference is for them to go back to Saturday Standard and Sunday Legacy Opens, each with $10K, but hopefully the first Legacy $20K Open gives them enough reason to have nearly 50% Legacy Opens on schedule if they decide to maintain this new format.

I'd give it more than one week, I imagine it being a holiday hangover weekend is hurting attendance.

[lordofthepit]

Bad news: this is the first time the Modern PIQ (250) had more players than the Legacy one (162). This was going to happen at an event at some point, and it makes it extremely unlikely that SCG will ever go back to the old system, since that would require Standard $20K Opens to be a complete flop (close), but Legacy to continue to show more popularity across the board than Modern.

Still, it's not surprising that this happened at Columbus for the first time. The first Columbus Modern PIQ in November was one of the best attended one with 181, which represented 69.9% of the attendance at the corresponding Legacy Open (259). From the timeframe between Baltimore (7/19/2014) and Portland (12/6/2014) in which Modern PIQs were held simultaneously with Legacy Opens, no other city had even close to this high of a proportion of Modern players on Sunday. Columbus is evidently a hotbed of Modern.

There will certainly be other venues where Modern will have more players than Legacy in the future (of the 17 events with Modern PIQs and Legacy Opens, Syracuse, Indianapolis, Dallas, Minnesota, and Atlanta were the other sites where Modern PIQs had at least 50% of the Legacy Open attendance). Hopefully, if Modern attendance is strong in the future, SCG will at least move the godforsaken 9 am start time for the Legacy PIQs back to something more reasonable.

[vnayin]

The large Modern PIQ might also be because there is a Modern GP next weekend.

[Barook]

The large Modern PIQ might also be because there is a Modern GP next weekend.

Probably, although I can see people getting tired of the blue-infested meta overrun with Delver.

[lordofthepit]

Probably, although I can see people getting tired of the blue-infested meta overrun with Delver.

That would be a valid point if Delver didn't represent a higher proportion of top decks in Modern than it does in Legacy (MTGTop8.com data).

Hopefully, vnayin is right about the upcoming Modern GP (which I was unaware of) contributing to higher Modern numbers and lower Legacy ones for this weekend, although I suspect Modern is simply very popular in Columbus.

Next week is the first Legacy Open under the new system, so I hope the turnout is strong and we can enjoy two days of excellent coverage!

[Barook]

That would be a valid point if Delver didn't represent a higher proportion of top decks in Modern than it does in Legacy (MTGTop8.com data).

Except Modern has been shifting away from UR Delver in both paper and online lately, unlike Legacy.

~10% would sound alot more bearable than ~25% spread over various, exchangable Delver variants.

[lordofthepit]

First Legacy $20K Open in Philadelphia draws 566. Considerably larger than the Standard Open in Seattle (449), but smaller than the Standard Open in Columbus (659).

What's very telling is that this is the largest Open ever held in Philadelphia (previous ones were 318, 521, 467, and 402), whereas the Standard $20K Opens were not the largest ones in their respective cities. In fact, Philadelphia has tended to have smaller Opens than Seattle, so the fact that the new Legacy Open in Philadelphia was bigger than the new Standard Open in Seattle (on an Invitational weekend!) is extremely telling.