QUOTE(Paul676 @ Nov 2 2011, 08:01 PM)

Rosti - I agree, it would be very frustrating to pay entry fee and then just get spat on by a pro. I'm always hesitant to do a double elim because I've never come across it outside tetris, and certainly not in sport tournaments which I've been a part of. I'm not quite sure why you don't like the idea of a plate tourney, since this would be the solution - it means that if someone gets an unlucky draw, they can still fight for something.
Double elimination tournaments are fairly rare in most sports, but in e-sports they're used pretty heavily, I think mostly just because of the ease of which you can run them when everyone is in one room the whole day. Pretty much all major SC2 tournaments in the West use a double-elimination format, for example.
I just don't think plates work very well when you've just got one big tournament. For regattas I think they work OK because there's generally like a dozen different competitions and being in the plate version of one competition is fine and adds to the day out, but I don't think a plate works as well for something like this. It just seems a touch stupid to have two competitions where one is entirely made up of people who weren't good enough to get through the first round of the other one, or deliberately threw their first game in the hope of getting easier opponents and at least winning something.
Plus from personal experience I find plate tournaments really annoying to people who lose in the second round, because you feel like if you'd lost in the first instead you'd have had a much better time with things. My crew also got shafted last year at Bedford regatta because we had a bye through to the second round and then an extremely difficult opponent there, and only really got to have one race because that bye meant we were ineligible to the plate, which we'd hoped to do fairly well in as a good M2 crew in a competition primarily full of M1 boats. Plates are good for some stuff, I just don't think so here.
QUOTE(Paul676 @ Nov 2 2011, 08:01 PM)

When would you have to know by to decide to cut your Japan trip short or not? I've got a few things lined up, hopefully (I don't wanna announce anything on this thread in case (a.) this thread affects any decisions made on the part of outside organisations and (b.) if I say something will happen, I've gotta be sure it'll happen, because I don't wanna disappoint.), so it should be pretty good. I'm just waiting on a few things.
To explain a bit, I have a study tour in S. Korea and Japan for the first two weeks of July. If I decide I want to stay on for longer than those two weeks, then I'll only have to pay the difference in flights between the ones I get home and the ones I'd have gotten anyway if I'd gone back at the end of the tour. This basically means that I have pretty much free return flights to Japan as far as taking a holiday goes, and I'd sort of like to make use of that. I was planning on staying on another two weeks and coming back at the end of July, but I'd probably be OK with staying on just one week to get back for the Open, especially considering that'll still give me three weeks out there in total.
For when that means I need to make a decision by - I don't know. Basically whatever date I decide that I need to have my own flight back from Japan booked, which I've not really put much thought into yet but I guess some time around April/May.