Wizards of the Coast today announced changes to the tournaments previously known as Regionals.  You can see their info sheet for the 2010 National Qualifiers here.  The major change is that the tournaments are no longer fixed to offer four slots to US Nationals.  A breakdown of the slots offered to the Northwest states:

National Qualifier Slots by State
State Slots
Washington 8
Oregon 4
Idaho 2
Alaska 2

It’s not clear yet whether or not there will be more than one qualifier per state.  If not, larger states like California, Texas and New York are going to be disadvantaged trying to serve their entire competitive player base with one eight-slot tournament. If they have multiple two or four-slot tournaments, though, this might not work out so poorly. The big winners in this new system are middle-sized states that are getting eight-slot qualifiers, like Washington, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The big losers? Depending on whether there will be one tournament per state for all the slots, or multiple tournaments across the state with the slots divided between them, California, Texas, and New York could be big losers. Also, states like Nevada, South Carolina and Maryland are only getting two-slot qualifiers, which is a downgrade as well.

How will this affect turnout? I think for the middle-sized states that are getting eight-slot tournaments, turnout will be up from last year. PTQ grinders from Spokane, for instance, are much more likely to go to the Tacoma qualifier than Boise. The same might be said for some of the southern Washington players as well, as eight slots in Tacoma might be more enticing than four slots in Portland. What the range limit is on this sort of decision making is more a product of the player, as grinders might be willing to travel a much longer distance to go to an eight-slot tournament than a two-slot one. If the plan is one tournament per state, though, we know why Wizards of the Coast was so reluctant to continue States on.

Still Had All These will be at the Nationals Qualifier in Tacoma on May 15. Hope to see you there!