The basic structure of Pro Tour Qualifiers haven’t changed for close to a decade now – non-qualified players square off in a swiss tournament leading to a Top 8 where the top two players play off for product and a travel check for $250 (domestic) or $500 (foreign), and a slot on the Pro Tour. The main goal of these qualifiers is the Pro Tour slot. There are four ways to qualify for the Pro Tour – win a slot at a PTQ/GP, have a high rating, get an invite due to previous Pro Tour finishes, or sleep with Randy Buehler. I’m proud to say I’ve done three of these four.
This article only speaks for the United States PTQs, because I do not know much about PTQs in other countries. Please keep this in mind when you read this article, as I’m trying to be as mindful as possible to the U.S. PTQ experience and problems, and do not mean to cast a blanket across all the global PTQs in dozens of different countries.
PTQ attendance is down. It’s hard to say how far down, or where we are comparing data from – but there are no longer PTQs that get 200-300 people as there were back in the day. There are several factors which contribute to this situation:
1) Many of the hardcore tournament players have qualified for the Pro Tour and are not allowed to play in Pro Tour Qualifiers. These players would be the ones traveling each and every week to PTQs (and bringing friends to split costs/share the experience) and are now on the gravy train and do not need to requalify.
2) There are more PTQs to attend, but less slots to win at each one. The first few seasons of PTQs had mostly two-slot qualifiers with a small percentage of one-slot qualifiers. The opposite is the norm now. Because players in many locations in the United States can hit a PTQ every weekend if they wished to travel up to five hours (and my apologies to the Midwest here, but the majority of the population in this country is in an area where you could hit a PTQ 5 hours from your house in any direction on any given weekend), many players will pick and choose PTQs to attend instead of hitting them all.
3) The prize support for winning a PTQ doesn’t really support attending a Pro Tour. A lot of players can’t afford to take time off from work, pay for a flight, and pay for a hotel room plus miscellaneous travel expenses. $250 covers maybe a flight if you’re lucky. $500 covers maybe a flight to Europe – but will barely dent a flight to Japan unless you get a hell of a deal.
4) Finishing anywhere other than first is a big letdown if you’re trying to qualify for the Pro Tour. There’s no tangible reward for finishing 2nd through 8th as far as qualifying for the Pro Tour, except for increasing your rating – but rating parking discourages playing at all, and losing a single round can set back an entire tournament’s worth of wins when you’re one win away from getting a ratings invite.
5) If you can’t attend a certain Pro Tour event, then there’s no point winning a slot. Slots don’t pass to other tournaments, and they are on a use-it-or-lose-it basis.
6) The novelty of PTQs has worn off.
Compare the all-or-nothing Wizards of the Coast system to the earn-as-you-go Upper Deck System (courtesy of the UDE policy document):
B-8 Vs. System Pro Circuit Credit System
Pro Circuit Qualifiers, $10,000 Championships and Pro Circuits themselves offer a chance for players to collect Pro Circuit Credits. Ten Pro Circuit Credits allow players to participate in a Pro Circuit tournament. Players can check Pro Circuit Credits at ratings and ranking page at UDE.com. Pro Circuit Credits are awarded as follows:
Pro Circuit
Place | Credits | Place | Credits |
1 | 50 | 36-50 | 6 |
2 | 40 | 51-75 | 4 |
3-4 | 35 | 76-100 | 3 |
5-10 | 25 | 101-150 | 2 |
11-20 | 20 | 151+ | 1 |
21-35 | 12 |
$10,000 Championship
Place | Credits | Place | Credits |
1 | 10 | 11-20 | 5 |
2 | 10 | 21-35 | 2 |
3-4 | 10 | 36-50 | 1 |
5-10 | 10 |
Pro Circuit Qualifier (PCQ)
Place | Credits |
1 | 10 |
2 | 5 |
3-4 | 2 |
5-10 | 1 |
- To enter a Pro Circuit tournament, a player must pay 10 Pro Circuit Credits.
- Beginning March 1, 2005 a player’s Pro Circuit Credits total will not rise above 20 points from participating in Pro Circuit Qualifiers.
- A player may never have more than 50 Pro Circuit Credits.
- Pro Circuit Credits never “pass down” in any way.
Example: Alex has 50 Pro Circuit Credits when he finishes 10th at a $10,000 Championship. He earns 10 Pro Circuit Credits. However, he already has the maximum of 50 Pro Circuit Credits, so he gains 0 Pro Circuit Credits.
Example: Danny has 13 Pro Circuit Credits when he arrives at Pro Circuit Anaheim. He spends 10 Pro Circuit Credits to participate in the tournament, decreasing his total to 3 Pro Circuit Credits. Danny finishes 120th. He earns 2 Pro Circuit Credits. Danny now has 5 Pro Circuit Credits.
Example: Adrian has 40 Pro Circuit Credits when he arrives at Pro Circuit Anaheim. He spends 10 Pro Circuit Credits to enter the tournament, decreasing his total to 30 Pro Circuit Credits. Adrian wins the tournament. He earns 50 Pro Circuit Credits. However, his total may not exceed 50 Pro Circuit Credits, so he gains only 20 Pro Circuit Credits.
Example: Jeff has 17 Pro Circuit Credits when he finishes 1st at a Pro Circuit Qualifier. He earns 10 points. However, his total points gained from a PCQ can not exceed 20 Pro Circuit Credits, so he gains only 3 Pro Circuit Credits for a total of 20 Pro Circuit Credits.
I like this system a lot better than the Wizards system, because it encourages people to play in more qualifiers. PCQ (Pro Circuit Qualifier) players have shown much more willingness to travel because they can earn points as long as they finish in the Top 10, and these points have an eventual, tangible benefit – qualification. Players will play in any season of qualifier, because they do not have to immediately use their slot for the upcoming Pro Circuit event. This allows them to bank up to two qualifications via the qualifier circuit, to be used at their leisure. There’s technically no such thing as a qualified player, so anyone can play in any tournament any time – allowing more talented players to intermix with newer or less experienced players in an advanced tournament setting. This increases the overall attendance both through the “qualified” player playing and through the people they bring with them to the tournament.
What are the downsides to this system? There’s the potential for teammate collusion by having already qualified players throw matches to unqualified players in order to advance them in a tournament setting. However, since first place isn’t the only place that matters in the long run for qualification, the effect of this is greatly lessened. This system would eventually allow more people to qualify for the Pro Circuit, but what does that matter? Shouldn’t Upper Deck or Wizards want 350 people attending an event rather than 300? It doesn’t affect the prize payout of the event any (barring the skins payout that happened at PT Philly, which is unworkable in its current form), and adds very little extra cost to the event – a couple of extra judges would need to be brought in, but the logistics of having the people there wouldn’t increase costs at all. When you’re renting a tournament hall, 10,000 square feet is 10,000 square feet no matter how you slice it. I’ve never been to a Pro event where extra space couldn’t easily be allotted to the main event.
Both Magic and the Vs. System have pros and cons to their overall tournament structure, from top to bottom. Magic has a much better actual Pro event right now, between the new point structure/player’s club, formats of the tournaments themselves (Pro Tours vary in format from tournament to tournament, while Pro Circuit tournaments all blend together and are much less unique and distinguishable), and interest in the game. However, Upper Deck is doing a much, much better job on the qualifier level – their system encourages travel, hitting multiple qualifiers a season, promotes a feeling of accomplishment over time when a player works a whole season to earn a qualification, and allows the convenience of using that qualification whenever that player wishes.
I’m not saying that Wizards of the Coast should copy the Upper Deck qualifier structure wholesale, but I am saying that the Vs. qualifier structure represents an evolution and a step forward from the Magic qualifier structure. I’m sure that people at Wizards have discussed this, and I just want to say that it’s okay to copy parts of each other’s systems. The great thing about competition is that it drives both sides forward to top one another by advancing technology, and there’s no shame in taking what others have done and improving on it. Upper Deck certainly did this when they developed their qualifier system, and now its time for Wizards to take the next step forward, shake the crust off the (almost) decade-old unchanged qualifier structure, and make qualifiers more appealing to players. After all, these are the building blocks of the Pro Tour.