Amidst the various discussions surrounding the recently announced changes to organized play, Jon Loucks asked a fun question:
“What would last year’s Worlds have looked like under the new system?”
I started to work on this one, then realized that this requires tallying lots of PWP totals across all the pro events for the year. That’s just too much work. However, the 2010 Pro Point totals remain a reasonable proxy for what 2010 PWP totals would have been. It’s only an approximate proxy, since the two systems differ in their relative weighting of GPs and PTs.
However, here’s how it might have broken out:
Note that in answering a question below, I realized I did this wrong the first time. The 2010 Pro Point totals I used included Worlds 2010…which we wouldn’t have if we were picking players for 2010 Worlds. Oops. Mea culpa. I’ll keep the incorrect stuff below the cut, but I’m going to replace it with a more accurate take now.
Event-based invites
Andre Coimbra (2009 World Champion)
Carlos Romao (2010 MTGO World Champion)
Simon Gortzen (PT San Diego winner)
Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa (PT San Juan winner)
Paul Rietzl (PT Amsterdam winner)
Regional invites
Brad Nelson (North America)
Martin Juza (Europe)
Shuuhei Nakamura (Japan)
Tzu Ching Kuo (Asia Pacific)
Mario Flores (Latin America)
Notably, I really had to dig down in the Pro Point list to hit the next player from that region after PV.
Ranking invites
Luis Scott-Vargas
Yuuya Watanabe
Brian Kibler
Kyle Boggemes
Marijn Lybaert
Josh Utter-Leyton
So that would be your prospective World Championship 16. That’s not a bad set of players, although one does feel for the presumably somewhat outclassed Mario Flores.
Some other notes on this putative World Championship talent pool:
6 Americans
4 Europeans
2 Japanese
1 APAC
3 Latin American
What do you think? Watchable? Fun? A true “world” championship?