When I scheduled this event about a year and a half ago I thought if we got 1700 for Madison we’d be pushing it. I took into account a new set, proximity to the Pro Tour and the general awesomeness of Madison as a whole. I set the initial room size and layout based on a 2000 player cap (expecting we’d be closer to 1700 if it went well). When I crunch initial preregsitration numbers into the tracking spreadsheet I use (designed by L3 Rob McKenzie) that compares this data to others, it’s telling me we’re well on our way to 2500 players total. So I went back to the proverbial drawing board, did a room redesign and added 400 chairs. This allows me to lift the cut off to 2250 players and still leave some extra room for between rounds and folks who are not playing in the main to hang out.
In addition to changing the cutoff number, I am moving start time for Friday to 12pm (noon) from the usual Legion start time of 2pm. This will allow us a little more time for check ins, for players to play grinders, and we can move one of the Saturday scheduled events over to friday to alleviate some of the early round space constraints. We will be holding all on demand (8 player) side events on Saturday until we determined there is enough room. If you’d like to come down and draft or play in another 8 player event on saturday, I’d suggest you wait for early afternoon, though we will start some if space is available for us.
I’m hoping this makes everyone a little more comfortable on Saturday, and allows us to get much closer to what our current total expected attendance to be. I want as many people who want to be able to play in GP Madison to be able to play!
That being said, Preregister now! If the preregistration trends continue, we will run out of the 2250 spots slightly before registration on site. If you don’t preregister online, you may not get to play at all!
Steve
Unless you are adding an equal proportion of tables, please stick to your original cap rather than cramming 400 extra chairs on the same number of tables. Players shouldn’t have to mash elbows all day and deal with insufficient play space just because of poor planning. Yes, it is far better to preserve a good experience rather than accommodate latecomers, even if that means collecting less entry fees.
I am indeed adding proportionate tables. Chairs are set to 6 chairs/3 matches per 8′ table just like before across the entire room. the space was retooled by decreasing the space around the edge of the room from about 24′ to ~20′ and moving the gaps between rows from 7′ between tables to about 6.5′. those 2 changes allowed me to add 2 rows and add a couple tables to the ends of the rows I already had.
I’ll add that if this was just a pure cash grab, I probably could have gotten 2700 chairs in there at least, but it would have made everyone miserable. As it is I added 400 seats, and am only increasing the cap 250 so that there’s still some buffer space.
Steve
Steve is too big a person to say it, so I will be irked on his behalf. Dubbing the situation “poor planning” is laughable, insulting, and betrays a lack of understanding of how planning these things works (not to mention, what is happening right now still counts as planning).
Glad to hear it, and thanks for the reply! I should not assume that you wouldn’t plan accordingly and was thinking back to a few specific Grand Prix (not yours) where attendance exceeded expectation and the experience was miserable as a result. It’s great that more people will get to play in your event.