The possibility that this can happen leads to support the argument that perhaps only a percentage of those entered should be sent on to a qualfying round rather than a set number. However, there needs to be an upper limit of the number of qualifiers. For current formats, 20 is probably the absolutely max number. But it makes little sense to qualify 20 from even a field with as many as 30. Something for the PAMPA Nats planners to ponder in the future, particularly if there is going to be an Expert category at the Nats.
Precisely my point in the other thread. This year, for instance, figure there would be 20 entrants in Expert and 22 in Open. If you still try to run 4 circles and take 50% of open, that means you would wind up taking 2.5 people from each circle. Or 3 from each, say. That makes the seeding hyper-critical. A better way to do it would be run Open on two circles and EXP/ADV on the other two, which at least reduces the "quantization" issues. Then you take the resulting 10-12 people and run Top 10 day to do a 50% cutdown. In open you could probably dispense with the Top 5 flyoff, and just have Top 10 day with the best 2 of 3 to determine the Open Championship. That will still be done before ADV/EXP Top 20 is done
The alternative is you keep the very popular and well-established "Top 20" and then most people can skip qualifying, it will mean nothing.
More likely, everyone will see the redundancy of running 3 divisions for 60 people total, and just get rid of Open since Expert will allow buy-and-flies and is thus more "inclusive". Mission Accomplished.
Brett