North America Teams

In previous years, you could pick them up at 8:00 and expect to play at 9:00. But now they have an 8:00 round, so I'm not sure when to go down. Suggestions?

But thanks for answering.

1. This is the best tournament for amateurs for playing a lot of high quality matches. It's always intense, all the time.

2. I wish they could improve the venue. I love the hotel but concrete floors are too tiring when you're playing non-stop for three days. And the lighting is so weird: bright on one table with distracting shadows, then dark on the next. And because every table is different, and we're always playing in different parts of the venue, there's no chance to get used to a specific type of lighting.

3. My biggest complaint is that they tried to do too much when they expanded enrollment to 272 teams. It's not reasonable to expect purple to play at 8 am and 9 pm (8 pm round delayed) on the same day with no break. Plus the fact that many round ended up being 2+ hours late.

I think they should seriously consider dividing this into east and west events. And only scheduling four rounds on Saturday.

That happened to my team a few years ago.  My memory is that to make more money the event was oversold.  We spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for tables to open up.  I haven't been back, or will I go back again.  The memories are bad, not good.

My main gripes are

a) bad logistics

b) greed overpowering common sense

a) As a captain I had to stand in line for the team registration for almost two hours. It should take literally 20-30 seconds to register the team.

- What's your team? XYZ... Uh-huh... OK, found it. Here is your sixpack of balls, here is your schedule for tomorrow. Thank you, goodbye.

Bam! 20 seconds.

Of course, not... almost everyone had to pay some extra fees right there in person! WTF?? It would be super-easy to simply email the team (captain) with the PayPal invoice, say, a week before the tournament... after all, when we register the team online, we pay online, so the system is already set up.

Granted, there will be teams with some more serious registration issues - but 90% of the teams will not have them.

On top of that, these people managed to NOT have the free spectator passes promised to the players who made reservation at the Gaylord. Plus, they told me to come and pick the passes in the morning at the same line (team reg.) I dutifully came in the morning, stood in line for 15-20 minutes until I realized that something was wrong - then, of course, I was informed that free passes were being distributed in the individual registration line. I nearly flew off my handle. I was forced to wake up around 6.30 am (so I can get up, take a shower, have a quick breakfast, come to the hall not later than 7.30 so we can warm up and check in for the match) and they still managed to make me lose 15 minutes standing in the wrong line. HANG A FREAKING PIECE OF PAPER saying where the free passes are! Sorry for yelling...

b) And don't get me started on the greed that forced them to try and hold the event in the same hall (they managed to squeeze five-six more tables into the same hall but they had literally 30% more people than last year!). If you announce that 212 teams is the cutoff and you cannot accommodate more than that - then be honest and don't register more than 212 teams... well OK, register five more just in case if some of them will not arrive for this or that reason. But 272 teams with almost eleven hundred players?

Playing at 9am is already not a very fun thing for me, but I absolutely refuse to have any respect for organizers who due to their own ineffectiveness and greed force us to spend 14-15 hours in the playing hall with super dry air, lighting problems, and cement floors.

What if next year the tournament becomes even more popular and 330-350 teams decide to come? What will NATT do? Oh wait... I know - because they already did it! they raised the registration prices yet again trying to either slightly lower the participation or to offset the complaints and problems with the better income (I guess they are willing to be yelled at as long as they are getting paid more).

Overall feeling, after the tourney is over, is exhaustion, disappointment and general feeling of unhappiness - despite the fact that I actually did better than in 2017-2018. However, the only day when I played while not feeling half-comatose was Sunday, after I asked my teammates to take over my captaining duties and to allow me to skip the 8am attendance - so I finally could have a decent night of sleep.

Ah makes sense, i can attest to this i have red flooring at my house, it was super heavy omg.  

Also as other have mentioned, its INSANE that we are in 2019 almost the turn of the decade and these morons make people wait in line for almost 2 hours for "registration" what in wrong with them.  Flat out being captain is the absolute worst.  

Also idk if anyone else noticed, but i had a very hard time finding a trashcan that wasn't attached to an empty water tank lol.  

That's the standard excuse for not putting out floor mats, but it's cheap manual labor. Or contract out the job for a fixed price. It's time we setup accepting concrete floor on the USA.