I'd like to follow up on David's question from November:

1. Is it legal for the organizer to award byes for sanctioned tournaments (either Regular or Competitive)? I assume the answer is no, but still I'd like to check. If the answer is yes, can the criteria be arbitrary? Does it matter whether the tournament is Premier?

2. Is it legal for the organizer to run invitation-only tournaments? i.e. having “qualification tournaments” for some kind of main event, where only the best players from the qualifications would be able to play and all others would be barred from participation? I assume that's a yes, because StarCityGames seems to be doing it but why would this be allowed and not byes?

1. No, not for sanctioned events. For unsanctioned events, you can do things like that.

2. Again, only for unsanctioned events; the qualifiers you refer to could probably be sanctioned, but the invites or byes or other play advantages awarded would have to be used in a non-sanctioned event.

Note that it is conceivable that someone could get permission from Organized Play for an exception - but I don't anticipate that happening for most local events.

d:^D

Whoops - I mean “Wizards Play Network”, not Organized Play. If a store/TO wants to run something unusual, it's always a good idea to start with your WPN rep.

d:^D

If you have an advanced store, you have access to WPN Premium
Tournaments. These events offer a higher PWP multiplier and can,
indeed, offer byes or work on an invite-only basis. There are a few
restrictions that apply.

However, you need to talk to your WPN representative about organizing
these kinds of events. They'll be happy to discuss details with you
and help you set things up!

Some more information at:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/Events.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/events/wpn/premium

Jurgen

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 5:07 PM, Scott Marshall
<forum-2774@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

2. Again, only for unsanctioned events; the qualifiers you refer to could probably be sanctioned, but the invites or byes or other play advantages awarded would have to be used in a non-sanctioned event.

But what about MTR Section 10.3?

Magic Tournament Rules 10.3
Tournament Organizers may hold and sanction invitation-only non-Premier tournaments normally, as long as they offer a sufficient number of qualifying tournaments in advance to ensure that all players have a chance to qualify.

As for why it's allowed, but not byes… I couldn't tell you. But I know that there is no mention of byes being permissible anywhere in the MTR, as least to the best of my knowledge.

Byes only make sense for sufficiently large events. Any store that is likely to run such and event has access to running them via their WPN Advanced status so they can talk to the WPN rep about running them.

Darcy, I'd forgotten about that 10.3 - thanks for posting that! And, yes, that was added - and we've all seen it in action, with Star City, TCG, and other qualifying series events.

But, like I said before - check with your WPN rep, who can (probably) help you clearly define “a sufficient number of qualifying tournaments”. (I have no idea what that requires…)

So its possible to get byes for a PTQ?

No. Your WPN rep will not let you run a PTQ with byes. All PTQ are run the same.