Charles Randall Larenas-Leach

Last year, I created maps showing the attendance for each Tier Two event held during the year. This year I did it again, but we can compare the maps from year to year. I have some thoughts to add in addition to the images, so I made a blog post about each one. Latin America: A Reflection Attendance and Day Two in Oceania and APAC Why the Dubai SPE is bad for Europe

Attendance When I look at these maps comparing attendance in Europe from this year to last year, my first impression is not to note how attendance has gone up. My first impression isn’t to say that no SPE in the region had over 100 Masters, and that the smallest Regionals had over 200 Masters. These are all true, but my first impression is to say that many tournaments are gone. Not including Russia, which was a special case, I count eight SPEs in Europe last season. In contrast, there were four this season. In my opinion, this is fine and it is a step forward. Here is why:  1) SPEs are worth more Last year, there were 8 SPEs. The winners of each tournament received 145 points. This year, there were four SPES, and the winners of each tournament received 200 points. This means that there was a 50 percent drop in number of tournaments, but only a 31 percent reduction in points given to the winners of those four tournaments compared to the points given to the eight previou...

APAC attendance Overall, attendance is up in the APAC region. The same number of tournaments were run, with the addition of one Special Event. This means that it’s especially easy to compare attendance from last year to this year. Let’s start in Australia and New Zealand. Last year, the region had the International Championships and two Regionals in Australia, and a third Regionals in New Zealand. This year, New Zealand exchanged its Regionals for a Special Event, and Australia received a third Regionals. This change means that Australia is still the only country in the entire rating zone with more than one Tier Two event. However, once we see how the Day Two race is going, we will see that it isn’t a huge advantage. It’s always disappointing when events are taken away or when someone loses something. The only loser in the region is New Zealand, who lost the cash from their event. However, their attendance dropped from 49 to 36, which means that cutting $4250 in cash prizing o...