I'm curious, isn't a single judge for 15-20 events (120-160 players) insufficient?

Once an 8 player event has started there is very little need for a judge outside of the occasional rules questions. No beginning of round or end of round procedures, no deck checks, no pairings or results. The hard part is getting the 8 players started.

Also, because the events are single elimination, an event loses half of its players every round.

- Emilien

Expanded the article with a cheat sheet / instruction sheet for runners or prize station staff who are joining in a hurry. (download)

As a pretty tardy response to Yonatan: What Mark and Emilien said is true. Only events that have just started have 8 players in them. Others will have 4, or 2. So those 15 events are more like 40-50 players than 120. All playing a regular REL event in a format they are usually familiar with, and that doesn't need stuff like round times and result slips.

Anniek, thank you very much for taking the time to organize the info and sharing your experience! The article is really useful!

I would like to signal a couple of different methods to help gathering players for firing an event:
-areas marked and numbered on the floor with tape, using the same numbers as in the buzzers. Great if the buzzer number is reported on the bracket or communicated to the runner somehow.
-lines of 8 chairs, a line per format (draft, standard, etc.). Beware of different events of the same format starting back-to-back during happy hours. Requires chairs and more space, but the area keeps clear with no effort. Works even if the buzzer number is not communicated.

In both cases they require players to be informed of the gathering point when registering.

Outstanding article, thanks Anniek for writing this ans thanks Florian for linking it for upcoming GP Brum.

I have some small small feedback in terms of prize tix, they don't need to be banded with events as I find that in-effecient, infact GP London where all events fed into a dedicated ticket redemption table was super effective by just dishing out tix and highlighting the player names as they redeemed.

In copenhagen I was forced into banding them up and it caused unnecessary work plus took time to get the tickets out of a rubber banded small wedge and giving to players, instead of just having the piles to hand out. (Infact when my team lead clocked off, I did my own thing with tickets to wrap the day up and had a lot easier time of it.)


A walking floor manager who's got their own map is great, enhanced with the ‘live time’ Kefka app it's very beneficial and visibility of the floor manager is also great, not hidden behind some curtain or buried looking busy behind some device or wall of product… Out there often walking the tables, very obvious, very approachable. Love it.

Banding tickets per events has the downside of taking more time and work, but the upside of giving a far more rigorous overview on the tickets distribution and making easier to notice mistakes and where they come from. Which system to use depends on the priorities given by the TO.

- Emilien