This post from the Canadian Cubers http://canadiancubing.eamped.com/post1246.html#1246 "My understanding, in my dealings with the WCA is that we are limited to having 4 competitions per year in the same province." That doesn't seem to make sense, considering that California alone had 7 competitions last year. I'm just wondering if there's any restrictions on how often a competition can be or how close to other competitions. I don't plan on holding a bunch of competitions, but I'm wondering if I need to make sure I coordinate with other competitions in the region.

Hi Bryan, There is no limit in the regulations for the number of competitions per area. So technically you could have 100 competitions per year in one place. The goal of the WCA is: more competitions in more countries with more people and more fun, under fair conditions. To me this means: everyone should have a fair number of opportunities per year to compete. We are far from that still. We need more people to take initiative all around the world. WCA is very willing to support those people. But there are areas where there could be weekly competitions with the required number of competitors. The number of 4 per year per province was mentioned in earlier communication. If someone would want to organise more than 4, then I would kindly ask that person to try and organise a competition in another province. To give other puzzle fans the opportunity to gather and compete. Of course you can have an unlimited number of unofficial competitions per year. Thanks, Ron

What about for Canada? The provinces in Canada are pretty huge (probably bigger than a few European countries combined even). It is already a bit of a drive if you want to it to be held in different cities, like Niagara Falls vs Toronto (2 hours drive or so). If we would consider for the East Coast in Vancouver, we'd have to fly there (5 hours). For in Europe a 2 hour drive could be in a different country already! We were thinking of having say, a seasonal Toronto Open (for each quarter), and perhaps in Niagara Falls (Rhodri is planning this), as perhaps well as in high schools (like Andrew Kang did in his). Of course, these are all happening in the larger province of Ontario, which all these competitions will be held in different areas anyways--but this would be well over 4 competitions per year (not to mention say, Canadian Open, unless we held it in the East Coast). I just feel that, for a bigger country like Canada, to travel to other provinces for competition because of the 4 competition limit is a bit far too much to do...well that's just my thought. -Harris

I know one thing that might prevent people from holding a competition in other places is the number of participants requirement. I would take more of a risk if I knew there was less of a chance that all the tournament results become NULL because we didn't have enough people. I understand the requirement is there to prevent people from holding and extremely small tournament all the time. I'm not sure how you could distinguish between the person who's trying his best to get people to go to the competition and doesn't get enough versus the person who does minimal advertising and it's just him and his friends. Especially with the younger cubers who may not be able to travel, I'm not sure where the pockets could be.