Tournament Endurance... How much do you have?

  The other day I was talking to another Tournament Organizer friend of mine.  I won't go into which tourney he hosts cause I don't want to change any peoples excitement or change their thoughts (positive or negative) on the event as a whole (He runs a great event).  But what I did want to talk about was 'how much is too much,' at a tournament?




I think we can all agree that 3 games in a tournament isn't enough.  If you get a lucky placement the first round and club the baby seal across from you there is actually a good chance you could get another 'not-so-good-player as your opponent the next round who happened to get lucky in his first round.  This would mean that you would be playing at the top table during the last round and would likely be the only challenging game of the day for you.

So if 3 is not enough, what is too much? is 8 too much? is 10? What about 13?  What if we are talking about a two day event?

My friend is planning 13 (8+5) games over 2.5 days.  Granted this is if you play in all of the events and you could opt out of either the 8 games or the 5 games... I love 40k and sometimes feel that I could play it straight all day... But with 15 minutes between rounds and 1 hour for lunch a one day 5 round tourney would be 12 hours of gaming, and it is only friday night.  The next day you wake up and play 4 more games and then do the same thing on Sunday.

I have been playing in tournaments for a long long time and maybe I have gotten a little soft over the years, but when I play 4 games straight at a high level of competition, I am dead freaking tired, all I want to do is drink, sleep and take an advil... I for sure don't WANT to play another game and if forced to I will likely be a very cranky opponent at that point. I couldn't imagine doing that 3 days in a row!  I think I would most likely give up 40k for a month or seven just to recover. lol

Suck it Cal Ripken Jr. Im the Iron Man now!

But that is me, it may be the youth slowly fading from my veins, or it could honestly be too much gaming in a short amount of time.  What I want to know is what do you think? Seriously though, I know that while your sitting in your cubicle/office/house reading this it sounds like an amazing good time... But try to remember those times that you thought a marathon of any kind was a good idea, marathon drinking in College, Halo/Call of duty marathons, actual marathons.

So lets say you do decide that it is a good idea and play in it, you for sure have to plan out your day like any other kind of marathon.
1. Sit at every opportunity you have to rest your legs,
2. Have a snack pack with you to eat between rounds after lunch (thanks wifey!) Tylenol, Baer, Aspirin, and other misc non-illegal drugs also welcome too, gotta stop those migraines ya know.
3. pray for nice opponents cause one bad game will ruin your attitude the rest of the day.
4. Win all your games so you look forward to playing in the next round.

So here is the real question, after all of that, when the end of the third day comes and you have 13 games under your belt how do you feel? What is your endurance level?  Are you exhausted and ready to swear off the hobby for a few months just to simply recover? Or are you truly an iron man who will scoff at those losers falling asleep at the awards ceremony?

In essence which one of these two pictures are you!?

I would really like to hear what you think, what is too little, what is too much...What is the goldilocks number of rounds?


Duke