Your pencil calculation shows going from about 400 players per discipline to about 1000 players per discipline in the same time and same space?! Can you market that to every tournament director nationwide? Especially the Tuesday night weekly $5 events that finish at 4AM?
I said 1000 entries including buybacks, which might be only 400 players since my system allows more than one buy-back per person if they keep losing matches. Or it might be 600 players with 424 buy-backs. The main point is that you can keep all of the tables busy, which maximizes the number of players who can play.
If you want to market it, feel free, but it's so simple it will be hard to charge for it. Here it is:
Run the entire event single elimination. You get buy-backs because the first phase is a bunch of what you could call mini-qualifiers -- 8-player single-elimination brackets. When a reasonable number of players have arrived, such as 16 or 24, draw them into brackets. Start them playing. Once a bracket starts, play for that bracket does not stop until it has finished (maybe with very short rest breaks). The winners of the brackets go on the "main board" which is played starting at a specified time. The losers can sign up for another qualifier. New players who show up late can sign up until all of the minis are filled or you cannot fill another one.
There are various minor details. If you only have 20-30 players usually, use groups of 4. If you have great steaming piles of players, use groups of 16.
Anyone on the main board wins money. Maybe the runner-up in a qualifier gets his money back or a free entry to another qualifier.
There are various draw-timing strategies to prevent waiting until Efren and Earl are drawn into minis.
For a two-day tournament, run qualifiers on the first day, the main board on the second.
For Derby City, the main board players for banks don't have to enter the one pocket until they have finished banks, so there is less overlap problem for each player. The one pocket can start as soon as the banks are down to the main board, since you are only using 32 of 40+ tables at that point.
I have seen one player enter five times with this format. There is no problem with that. Let him pay to play. That particular player finished 3rd-4th on the main board.
If you get knocked out from an early qualifier, you can go have lunch, nap a little, and when you are ready, you can sign up for another qualifier, if you feel like it. Or maybe try again the next day. If you get stuck on a flooded road and show up a day late, that's no problem at DCC. You can still enter a qualifier and probably get a buy-back or two if you lose your first or second match.
At DCC the qualifiers should probably be 16 and the main board 64. If the main board doesn't fill, the players who qualified first get the byes to encourage promptness. You can start main board play as soon as you have 33 qualifiers finished, if you want significant matches for the TV table.
Showing the schedule is dead simple because the groups go in order and you don't get a break once you start your group. (Groups of 16 might get an hour between the second and third rounds.) One group being slow only holds up that group. After a little experience, it's easy to predict how often groups will be starting, and you don't need everyone from a group to be present in the "on deck" area to start some from that group.
