My reasoning for not always running amateur is completely irrelevant from entry fees. I think your method of entry fees is fine, and understand the reasoning behind it. I also think having an amateur bracket that you buy back into is fine for those who have issue funding an event they will not be a part of. The fact that the community is so small and sponsorless makes it difficult to find a balance between those two options, but they are both adequate for the hosting situation we have.
However, from what I have found, people are not expressing strong interest or general opinions towards having an amateur bracket. If this is not the case, I urge those interested in an amateur event to send me a private message me and bring this up so there can be evidence to the contrary. I have found that people are happier with having a few hours throughout the day with casual TV's, as well as not feeling obligated to constantly be in the venue for an event. Spacing out events and leaving extra time for when issues arise has proven to be important to finishing a tournament on time constraints. I feel with a larger number of entrants, an amateur bracket has often hindered a tournament from running on a concise schedule, which I feel it is one of my top priorities to prevent as a host.
I'm sure there's more to talk about on this subject, and we both need to keep learning and improving the way we each host our tournaments. There are logical reasons for running tournaments a variety of different ways, and each host needs to choose which of those they find to be most important in order to taper their events to their goals. I urge you to give me a call, and hope you're getting a better understanding of where I'm coming from.
