Anyone interested, please just respond with 3 pieces of information first, which you can then follow with commentary:
Distance/hours willing to drive for Vintage in SA,TX?
I'm gonna say 197 miles because that's how far it is from my house to San Antonio and it doesn't make sense for me to drive further than that to get to San Antonio. This is kinda a weird question.
Prize support that makes the trip worth it?
I care less about prize support and more about the ratio of entry fee to prize support. I believe it's ~90% for both Austin and Houston, with the 10% going to paying for tournament supplies.
Entry fee that makes the prize seem fair/worth the attempt?
In terms of scheduling, I'll pay whatever the entry fee is given that the prize pool is adequate. However, once you get to $40 or more, I'm going to expect it to be professional. I'm talking lots of space, dedicated judges, match slips, the ability to process credit cards, etc. For semi-casual like at a brewery, no more than $25, and even that's pretty high given that I'll also be forking over a lot of cash to the bartenders.
I boil it down to one thing: Don't make me get a hotel room (or crash) for more than one night.
That means it either needs to be late enough in the day that people can wake up and drive to it or early enough in the day that people can drive home afterward. If you're going to be having booze (like Houston and Austin do), I'd aim for that first one since people aren't likely to want to road trip after a half dozen beers.
If I'm traveling, give me something to do before/after. Both times I've driven to Austin, the Austinites have arranged going out to bars afterwards. This is a ton of fun and way better than me sitting in my hotel room.
