Tournaments: What should smaller areas do with their Nationals/Continentals?

This is an issue with more relevance to us in Asia, Australia & NZ and possibly South America. Sorry to those of you in Asia & South America, this will be very Australia-centric.

Particularly in Australia, we have a small-ish number of players (in comparison to other Countries) and they are fairly geographically spread. It's probably around $150AUD for the cheapest flights at the worst times to get between any of the East Coast cities (it's up to $400AUD to get from Perth to Sydney/Melbourne). That's without accomodation and while we're a friendly mob and will offer couches, etc... some of the Aussies just don't feel happy couch-surfing.

So, there are a few issues that are obvious for us:

• Limited player bases combined with the "Multiple Qualifications" system means that regions tend to have a few number of players who Qualify multiple times.
• Long Distances tends to mean that people are less willing to travel insterstate unless they have qualified already.
• Distances can penalise some playgroups more than others. We're much more likely to get Aukland players at a Nationals in Sydney, than we would get players from Perth coming to Sydney.

One of the solutions I've heard discussed is to convert our Nationals into an Open Event, rather than an Invitiational. I actually like the idea.

Having a 3, 4 or even 5 round + final tournament over two days allows us to ensure that the players in the final are the best of the best. A variant of this is to allow an Open Event (2R+F) on Day 1, then the top 10-15 are then segregated for 2R+F on Day 2 and the remainders can play a social tournament or just a day of social games.

Positives:

• People can see a reason to come even if they might not make it into the Day 2 Event
• People aren't speculating cash on flights, etc to come to a LCQ and then at most play for one day.
• It is easier to reduce the per-player cost of venues, which is important if the event is held at something like a Gaming Convention.

Negatives:

• Some people will feel that the event is less elite (in my own mind, that's almost irrelevant)
• It doesn't match with the current VEKN Continental Champs requirements
• In Australia, it would potentially only work well during University/School Holidays and I'd speculate AT another major event like a Convention (again to encourage people to make the effort to travel)

Personally, I don't think that making smaller Championships (like Australia and Asia in particular) a 2-day Open event will harm the credibility of the winner, or the validity of the event itself by having a restricted field on the second day.