The Tournament Organizer of a tournament is responsible for all tournament logistics including:
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- Sanctioning the event.
This is obtained by sanctioning the event in Eventlink, through the creation of the event. Each event has a unique sanctioning number.
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- Providing a site for the tournament that meets the tournament’s expected needs.
To ensure a smooth running event, the tournament organizer must provide a play space that will allow the event to have space required for the expected number of players. This may range from the store they run having enough room for their FNM, or renting out a room in a hotel or convention center to make adequate space.
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- Advertising the tournament in advance of the tournament date.
In order to ensure that players are available to participate in the tournament, we need to ensure that it is advertised when and where the event is happening. This can range from making sure the event shows up in Wizards Store & Event Locator, to promoting the event on Facebook and other social media, to having large ads on magic related websites.
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- Staffing the tournament with appropriate tournament officials.
Tournament Organizers need to ensure that they have properly qualified tournament officials to staff the event. As a rule of thumb, you want one judge per 32 players for smaller events, with additional judges as you break 100 players. Additionally the type of event (Regular REL or Competitive) may require additional rules that specific levels of judges have been trained in.
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- Providing all materials necessary to operate the tournament (e.g. product for Limited format tournaments).
Tournament Organizers need to ensure that sealed product and other required materials are available for limited format tournaments and that deck list sheets available for constructed tournaments. Those are pretty straightforward. The Tournament Organizer is also responsible for providing a lot of other things that players may take for granted — e.g., a computer and printer to take results and print pairings, tape, places to post pairings, round clock, and scissors/paper cutter to cut results slips. Some of these aren’t required but make the event go smoother, and typical Tournament Organizers will provide these. Some may find alternate ways to do some of the tasks these are used for, such as using a large TV to display pairings.