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To use frazzled's term, if a basement-dwelling mouthbreathers can identify basic problems with a tournament's organization (e.g., a judge of comp. himself playing a list with a seemingly incongruous comp. score) then shouldn't we expect more of the successful business owners who's bread and butter this is?

Ok some of you seem to think tourneys are easy so I am reposting this post to this forums, and maybe you will get some idea what goes into this money and heart wise. I am doing this because I agree that instead of actual ideas and criticism some of you are just turning into a flamming war and I say put up or shut up!

So I thought to break down a tourney for you. I will use mine to be easy. Now I am allowing 120 for mine now lets just say by some miracle I sell all the tickets that would be 6k.
-Venue Hall 1k-1200(and thats on the cheap trust me) It is costing me $45.00 and hour to rent a hall and thats the cheapest I could get.
-Insurrance that is mandatory by the hall $500(took me 3 weeks to find this rate)
-Paypal charges me $30.00 a month which will be $120.00 by the time the event occurs, and $1.75 for every $50.00 a person pays so grand total of $330.
-my website was all told $150.00 and thankfully I had a professional donate his time to build it. So all told before we even get into terrain and what not. I am at $2180 (mind you I am fronting this cash until the tickets are sold).
-Dealers cost for me to purchase all of the tables and supplies when I priced it out at home depot and lowes is 2k-2500 . So on the low end I am now at $4180. Now this is just to get the supplies mind you.
-Now I need to get people to work the event and help build the terrain.
-Tropheys even with the great thomas wynnss prices I am looking at almost $400.00 bucks. OOO and I am flying a VIP in another $400 in plane and food.

Keep in mind GW announced the Ard boyz the other week the same day as my first day of my tourney so their went most of my 40k players so no I am lucky to pull 10 40k and should cap the fantasy at 60 so total will probably be around $3500.00 yep and I wanted to donate the profits to charity. Thankfully I went out on a limb and got some great sponsors.

Empchild,
That is a considerable outlay and no doubt organizing this has consumed much of your time. The key now, of course, is to conduct it in such a way that you can avoid the silly mistakes recently remarked upon (failure to post scores between rounds, opponents playing each other in subsequent rounds, poor and subjective comp scoring, etc). In other words, since you've spent so much time and money getting the tournament organized try to cross the Ts and dot the Is better than has been the case in other tournaments.

Incidentally, you could consider co-hosting with a University's gaming club as that will often get you a venue for free.

olympia wrote:Empchild,
That is a considerable outlay and no doubt organizing this has consumed much of your time. The key now, of course, is to conduct it in such a way that you can avoid the silly mistakes recently remarked upon (failure to post scores between rounds, opponents playing each other in subsequent rounds, poor and subjective comp scoring, etc). In other words, since you've spent so much time and money getting the tournament organized try to cross the Ts and dot the Is better than has been the case in other tournaments.

Incidentally, you could consider co-hosting with a University's gaming club as that will often get you a venue for free.

I am actually using a national Gaurd Armory(since I work for the gaurd). Now mind you I also work 50-60 hours a week now as a IT for the Gov't(promotion recently) and my weddings in two weeks so I feel the pain of Mike and other TO's as it's not easy. The reason I posted this was to show some of you what really goes into these event. Especially in the first year of an event their are always bugs as I am sure their will be for mine. It is just a natural aspect of the business but with valid "imput" not YOU SUCK it gets better. The tournies only get better from the players giving actual input, and input should not be "THIS SUCKS AND YOUSUCK" it should be hey this was wrong because of X and X reasons, and this input should only come from those AT the event as they know first hand what went on. If they don't give feedback then they have no one to blame but themselves for the event not living up to their expectations, and if they still don't like it well I just posted what at minimum it takes to start one of these up. Mike has been incredably helpfull walking me through the process and becomming a sponsor for me when he doesn't have too. I think some of you are going at him in the wrong context and it saddens me greatly.

sabote wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

olympia wrote:Why are the mods frazzled and mannihim so defensive? Who pissed in your cornflakes? TOs make silly albeit minor mistakes and get called out. I'm glad. They sure as @#$^ won't make dumbass mistakes like having participants subjectively judge comp. Frazzled commenting 'not as a mod' in no way excuse the reckless generalizations you make. tsk. tsk.

Not as mod means I can post the same craptacular statements as the rest of you losers. After all I are one too.

I've run tournaments, I've played in tournaments. Discussing tournaments and improving them is great. But there's a crapload of mangina whiny baby going on from people who've never run them, have no support, and I'd bet good money have never done .

In Real Life (TM off GW I got it first!) I've rarely, rarely heard of anyone complaining about a tournament itself. Other players yes, but rarely about the tournament.

We are probably more similar in our opinions than I came across. My point with TOs is that any mistake they make good or bad always gets highlighted and thus we have these long internet discussions.

Like you I have never heard of alot of people complaining in person and if they have a complaint I certainly dont think it warrants such discussions on how to change the whole tournament scene.

Yes I have gotten rulings that I disagree with or paint scores I thought were unfair. So what, thats part of a tournament. You know these things happen. Life is not a perfect world.

Yet these discussions in the internet over comp and cheating IMO are building a much bigger paranoia than warrants the many threads spread across multiple forums(in many cases by the vary same people or groups)

Where as before after a tourney you would go home and sulk about how unfair(right or wrong) certain aspects of a tourney was to your friends. Now people seem to feel the need to jump on the internet and blast left or right.

If you go to a tournament, read the rules and standards set by the TO(hopefully this is done ahead of time). Expect things wont be perfect. There is no reason you will not have a fun time.

There are tourneys for everyone now. Ones with comp(i have yet to play in one and don't intend to unless thats all there is), sportsmanship and ardboyz. Why standardize? YOu will never get everyone to agree and thus will end up full circle again with another person starting a topic about whats wrong with tournaments all over again. In fact its the diversity of tournaments that I like. It would get tiring if they were all the same and certainly people will spend much more time on "gaming the game"

Oh my I think we are heavy agreement. I will celebrate with another pic.

sabote wrote:There are tourneys for everyone now. Ones with comp(i have yet to play in one and don't intend to unless thats all there is), sportsmanship and ardboyz. Why standardize? YOu will never get everyone to agree and thus will end up full circle again with another person starting a topic about whats wrong with tournaments all over again. In fact its the diversity of tournaments that I like. It would get tiring if they were all the same and certainly people will spend much more time on "gaming the game"

Amen! I am a firm believer in different strokes for different folks.