Wild cards & local participants - a new approach

So, what I hate about wild cards ... Pro players who have legitimately qualified for a round find themselves playing an extra match before the round they've qualified for.

And what I like about wild cards ... it gives local players a chance to gauge themselves against the Pro players, and possibly improve their game. It gives players who are good but because of economic or family reasons, can't realistically compete on the Pro Tour.

Any way of having a system that prevents what I dislike but allows local players to compete? I think there is.

Assume a tournament 'proper' i.e. at its venue, is due to have 64 players ...

Let the Pros compete in a qualifying tournament for 60 places.

Have a local tournament for the remaining 4 places. No restrictions on who can enter the local tournament - a player from a neighbouring country? Fine. A jet-setting amateur from the UK? Fine. A local (or not-so-local) Pro who didn't enter the Pro qualifying tournament? Fine. (Not fine to have a Pro who failed to qualify one way jet off to try to qualify a different way - once you're out, you're out!)

Result is local players get to compete, whilst no player has to play an extra match to reach a round they've already qualified for.

If the local tournament started with 128 players, I'd have 8 locally qualified players, if it started with 32 players, then 2 locally qualified players.

So, that's for competitions outside the UK. Would I also have a similar arrangement for tournaments in the UK? I think on balance the answer to that's a yes too.

I Think that is a fair way to do it


Look at the International Championship starting Monday theres 112 Main tour pros that have entered so all you need is a further 8 players from Q School rankings to top it up to 120 with 60 players earning a trip to the Venue. joined by 4 players thats gone through the "Host country qualifiers"