I thought about that, but I’m too lazy. :-D
Actually looking over the list, the vaste majority have played in the other Tourney or have some other games going on the site, so I think most will show up. We’ll probably have a few no shows or disaster round 1’s where people may surrender, but I think that is unavoidable.
As for tourney format, I thought about the Lynx and JWW idea but think that is essentailly the same as the 36 format with everyone playing.
If the Alts play games at the same time rd 1 is playing then you can’t sub in if someone doesn’t show up since you’d need to wait for a winner of the Alt games. I suppose we could wait to make sure the rd 1 games are underway, but then if everyone shows up for rd 1, it is less likely a winner from rd 1 will bail in rd 2, meaning the Alts remaining may not get into the tourney.
I guess the important thing is to get to 16 players left, once there it is fairly easy to run.
There was also a suggestion about Pool play, which I think was very cool, but the numbers (36) don’t quite work for that, 40 would work nice. 8 pools of 5 players. Everyone plays 4 games, pool winners advance and it is single elim from there. We’d potentially need tie breakers too. So I think this would just be a bit too much to try and do on the fly, but I’m definitly going to keep this in mind for the future, we tried it for Classic one year, but just didn’t have the players (Revised had already come out).
I think we’ll probably go with #2 and just let everyone play right away and get the byes out of the way early. HOWEVER, I think all players who have not played any games on this site will automatically play in the “play-in round”. The 4 left in the No-Tech Tourney will definitely get byes since that is still going on. Once I narrow the list down for the “new” players, it’ll be random draw for the remainder of the play-in, although I’ll play a game to make sure we get the round going. Also I think that will mean many players in rd 2 can start b/c not everyone will be waiting for a “play-in” winner.