The Future of Monday Pauper Deck Challenge: Your Response

Earlier this week, I asked my audience to respond to a set of four questions related to the future of Monday Pauper Deck Challenge and my involvement in the Standard Pauper format. I was happy to see that this was the most commented post on my blog, and I thought I would take some time today to look at what you guys had to say.

For clarity, let's take the questions one at a time:

I. Are two weekly Standard Pauper PREs really viable given the recent trends?

Overall there seems to be solid support for keeping both events. It doesn't seem like there is any agreement on why things are trending down. Suggestions for improvement included making sure we secure long-term prize support, do a better job of advertising, and re-brand the two events to make the distinction between them more clear. But if there are really distinct groups of players for European and American timezones, it makes sense to keep both.

II. Can we find a reliable and skilled host or hosts to run these two events for the long term? If not, do you feel like I should try and take back hosting MPDC?

The community seemed unanimous that there are enough players willing to do the hard work to provide reliable hosts for the future. There was some question as to whether or not I actually have the bandwidth to be one them, which I will address next week. There was also a suggestion of organizing a group of players together to run both events more as a business venture.

III. Is there sufficient interest for me to go ahead and get this "league-style" event off the ground, or is that simply muddying the waters further?

The "league-style" event I have been discussing got mixed responses, with an almost even split between positive and negative. There was some thought that the success of the recent Hipsters league event was due to the fabulous prize, and that this shouldn't be seen as a support for leagues overall. It was also suggested that this league event replace SPDC, which is the Thursday night Standard Pauper PRE. The question was also raised as to whether this is really the best thing for the community going forward.

Thanks again for all of you who took the time to respond. Please feel free to use the comments below to continue the discussion. I will mull over this information over the next few days and then let you know early next week what I think this all means.

Thanks for reading, and sorry that this is so late getting out!