StarCityGames.com has been running their $5k weekends for two years now and it was continuing to grow, well 2010 is the biggest, most potentially awesome. Today they announced 16 events, only 3 short of Wizards' Grand Prix schedule (though notably the prize pool for each weekend is 1/3rd the Grand Prix prizes.) However, along with their events, they announced the final 2010 event is an Invitational based on players accumulating 10 points from the various Open events to be invited to the Invitational.

At each stop of the Open, Saturday will be a Standard tournament and Sunday will be a Legacy tournament, the prizes will be $5,000 for each tournament as well as Invitational points being awarded depending on how you finish.

One very interesting fact is that the schedule overlaps the Grand Prix schedule in a number of places, only when the Grand Prix is outside of the United States. The SCG Open is by far the biggest and most exciting non-Wizards tournament series since the Pro Tour was announced. It shows a growing willingness of players to play at non-Wizards events and for Magic retailers to begin opening up for bigger sized tournaments in an effort to gain a competitive advantage.

With the StarCityGames schedule announced it is likely we will now see a torrent of events coming, from TCGPlayer, ChannelFireball and perhaps others. They were most likely waiting for this announcement to avoid conflicts which would wreck their event.

With the announcement came also news that these events will be covered by Bill Stark, a regular member of the Wizards coverage team, and GGSlive, the guys from Pastimes games who provide live video coverage of tournaments. Evan will undoubtedly be present at some or all of these but not providing live coverage.

We have added all StarCityGames Open events to our Premier Magic the Gathering Event Calendar.