I haven't seen anyone talk about this mostly because Wizards and Channel Fireball are hyping it as the biggest card tournament ever but if there's two completely distinct tournaments for all purpose shouldn't they also be considered distinct in considering what is the biggest tournament? It could be the biggest card convention or most people playing a game at the same time at the same place but not the biggest tournament. The World Series of Poker have multiple tournaments running at the same time at the same place but they're not considered as the same tournament just like side events are not considered in a GP attendance.
Technically speaking you may be right, but it was listed as one tournament and is only being forced to two due to size. So it really just depends on if you are getting in to the technicalities of it all. I will still consider it the biggest because people are signing up for the main event, and just getting put into two different blocks at random.
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The split was planned since the beginning. If they had so many people the would be two independant tournaments. It's great for the players to have twice the prize support and possibly slightly shorter rounds but if the players are totally separated and there's two winners. I guess it depends on what you define as a tournament, is a tournament a single event or could it include multiple events.
Don't know if you all know this but Wizards Event Reporter can only handle so many players, which is why they're splitting it into 2 tournaments. By the time they move to Day 2 tho, the top players moving forward will all fit into one tournament. And I don't know about comparing this to poker, but as far as Magic history goes, the largest turn out ever was GP Vegas 2013 where they had to turn something like 3000 players away because they couldn't handle any more players. And pending that all the pre-regs show, GP Vegas 2015 will be the largest GP in Magic history.
First of all, how large GPs have historically worked:
The hard limit in the scorekeeping software is not on the number of players, but on the number of tables, and the limit is 999. Which means no more than 1,998 players at two players per table. Of course, there have been quite a few GPs with more than 1,998 players, and the way this is handled is to create multiple tournaments to represent day one, assign each player to one of them (and pairing only within those sub-tournaments), and at the end of the day create a new unified tournament consisting only of the players who made the cut to day two.
Sometimes this has been explicit, with players being told which "flight" of the GP they're in, separate pairings and standings posted, etc. Other times it is only noticeable from a player perspective by the fact that tiebreakers reset at the start of day two and sometimes the pairings claim to be for one round later than what's actually being played. The tiebreaker reset happens because it's not possible to import the full match history from day one (that would go over the limit), and the round-number discrepancy happens because the actual method is to enroll all the day-two players and give each one a first-round bye, setting the match-point value of the bye to whatever number of match points they earned in day one.
(the unanswered question here is what would happen if a GP were large enough that more than 1,998 players made the cut to day two: GP Vegas will not be answering that question, since even if it hits the 10,000-player cap set for it, it's just not really possible for 20% of players to go 7-2 or better, and the realistic number is that a 10,000-player tournament would produce around 900 players at 7-2 or better)
Grand Prix Las Vegas will add another wrinkle to this: instead of one GP with multiple "flights" on day one, it actually will be two GPs, side-by-side. Last I heard, the plan was for each to split four ways day one; afterward, four flights will be merged to create a day-two field, and the other four flights will be merged to create a second day-two field. Each of those will continue independently, producing two independent top 8s and two independent champions.
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The hard limit in the scorekeeping software is not on the number of players, but on the number of tables, and the limit is 999. Which means no more than 1,998 players at two players per table. Of course, there have been quite a few GPs with more than 1,998 players, and the way this is handled is to create multiple tournaments to represent day one, assign each player to one of them (and pairing only within those sub-tournaments), and at the end of the day create a new unified tournament consisting only of the players who made the cut to day two.
Sometimes this has been explicit, with players being told which "flight" of the GP they're in, separate pairings and standings posted, etc. Other times it is only noticeable from a player perspective by the fact that tiebreakers reset at the start of day two and sometimes the pairings claim to be for one round later than what's actually being played. The tiebreaker reset happens because it's not possible to import the full match history from day one (that would go over the limit), and the round-number discrepancy happens because the actual method is to enroll all the day-two players and give each one a first-round bye, setting the match-point value of the bye to whatever number of match points they earned in day one.
(the unanswered question here is what would happen if a GP were large enough that more than 1,998 players made the cut to day two: GP Vegas will not be answering that question, since even if it hits the 10,000-player cap set for it, it's just not really possible for 20% of players to go 7-2 or better, and the realistic number is that a 10,000-player tournament would produce around 900 players at 7-2 or better)
Grand Prix Las Vegas will add another wrinkle to this: instead of one GP with multiple "flights" on day one, it actually will be two GPs, side-by-side. Last I heard, the plan was for each to split four ways day one; afterward, four flights will be merged to create a day-two field, and the other four flights will be merged to create a second day-two field. Each of those will continue independently, producing two independent top 8s and two independent champions.
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