These are my feelings regarding large tournaments and minimum requirements for them to run well and keep 95% of people happy. It's all opinion, so take it for what you will.
Speaking in terms of man power:
To successfully run a tournament with over 100 people you either need;
1 knowledgeable, fair, and friendly person who is NOT participating in the tournament, and is devoted to running the tournament the entire time (i.e. not wander off).
or
3 knowledgeable, fair, friendly people if they are all attending the tournament, and each must be devoted to coordinating and running the tournament when one of them has to play a match.
To successfully run a tournament with over 200 people you either need;
2 knowledgeable, fair, and friendly person who is NOT participating in the tournament, and is devoted to running the tournament the entire time (i.e. not wander off).
or
5 knowledgeable, fair, friendly people if they are all attending the tournament, and each must be devoted to coordinating and running the tournament when one of them has to play a match.
In terms of setups for any tournament, a good tournament should have 1 Tournament Setup for every 6 people attending the tournament(or 1:6). A great tournament would have 1:4. A ratio of 1:8 or higher usually gets complaints.
The more people attending a tournament, the harder it is to keep track of all players who are playing matches. Brackets larger than 64 people usually end with more than a couple players placing lower than they could have, because of improper seeding.
That's why any tournament with over 100 people should have a round of pools to cut the number of entrants down to at most 64
People who are either temperate, unreasonable, or unskilled in the particular game can almost never hold a large tournament that is widely considered successful.
People who are only holding the tournament to make money can only be successful if they make the exact prizes and entry fee clear from the start, and never change them, especially if they think they will not be making as much money as they thought. You must be willing to accept a monetary loss if your tournament attendance was not as big as you hoped, or if you mishandled your money.
Once again this is all opinion, not fact, so arguing or flaming is completely pointless.
