Hélène Bergeot started her career with Wizards of the Coast in France in December, 1995; afterwards, she spent a few years in the European headquarters based in Belgium and eventually relocated to the Renton office. She is currently the director of organized play and trade marketing.

At the last Pro Tour, we announced some changes to the Pro Tour Qualifier system, specifically with regard to Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers. Today, we'd like to follow up on those changes, along with some modifications to the Pro Tour Players Club and an update to the 2016 Grand Prix schedule.

Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers for the Second Pro Tour of 2016

The current round of Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifiers, going on in stores worldwide, feeds the second Pro Tour of 2016, which takes place April 22–24, 2016, in Madrid, Spain. Those Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers will take place on weekends of February 20 and 27 in 2016. Dates and locations for those Regional PTQs are below:

Date City State/Province/Region Country 20-Feb-16 Singapore Singapore 21-Feb-16 Spring Hill Queensland Australia 21-Feb-16 Sao Jose do Campos Sao Paulo Brazil 21-Feb-16 Toronto Ontario Canada 21-Feb-16 Santiago Region Metroplitana de Santiago Chile 21-Feb-16 北京 Beijing China 21-Feb-16 Villejuif Paris France 21-Feb-16 Berlin Berlin Germany 21-Feb-16 Desio Monza e Brianza Italy 21-Feb-16 新宿区 Tokyo Japan 21-Feb-16 大阪市 Osaka Japan 21-Feb-16 Mexico City Distrito Federal Mexico 21-Feb-16 Warsaw Mazowieckie Poland 21-Feb-16 Santa Clara California United States 21-Feb-16 Jacksonville Florida United States 21-Feb-16 Cambridge Massachusetts United States 21-Feb-16 St. Charles Missouri United States 21-Feb-16 Lincoln Nebraska United States 21-Feb-16 Knoxville Tennessee United States 21-Feb-16 Plano Texas United States 27-Feb-16 Sheffield England United Kingdom 27-Feb-16 Westmont New Jersey United States 28-Feb-16 Vienna Austria 28-Feb-16 Montreal Quebec Canada 28-Feb-16 Madrid Spain 28-Feb-16 Stockholm Sweden 28-Feb-16 San Diego California United States 28-Feb-16 Highlands Ranch Colorado United States 28-Feb-16 Burnsville Minnesota United States 28-Feb-16 Columbus Ohio United States 28-Feb-16 Bellevue Washington United States

This round of Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers will also bring two changes:

Last Chance Qualifiers

Every Regional Pro Tour Qualifier may host a Last Chance Qualifier on the day before their Regional PTQ takes place. The winner of a Last Chance Qualifier is given an invitation to compete in the Regional Pro Tour Qualifier associated with that Last Chance Qualifier the next day.

Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers

The round of Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers taking place between February 20 and 27, 2016, will have two Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers in which qualified players may participate. The first will take place on February 20 at 3 p.m. PT, and the second one will take place February 27 at 5 a.m. PT.

To register for a Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifier, a player who is qualified to compete in that round of Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers must send an email to premierplay@wizards.com with the following elements:

The title of the email should be "Magic Online RPTQ."

The email should include your DCI number, Magic Online username, and the date of the Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifier that you wish to participate in.

This email needs to be sent by Monday, February 15, 2016.

Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers will be capped at 212 players, so sign up early if you intend to play.

The Top 8 players will receive invitations to compete in the second Pro Tour of 2016, as well as an invitation to play in the Pro Tour Challenge event at that Pro Tour.

The format for these Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers is Standard Constructed.

As a reminder, if you play in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier during a qualifying round, you cannot play in any other Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers during that qualifying round, including Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers. Your invitation to compete in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier—whether because you won a Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier, earned an invitation with a fifth through eighth place finish at the previous round's Regional PTQ of 128 or fewer players, or are Silver in the Pro Tour Players Club—only lets you compete in one Regional Pro Tour Qualifier.

2016 Promo Card

In addition, these Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers mark the start of a new year, and a new promo card for all players that participate in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier. Every player who competes in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier will receive a foil Snapcaster Mage.

Players who compete in a Magic Online Regional Pro Tour Qualifier will instead receive an online version of this promo card.

While the purpose of the Regional Pro Tour Qualifier is to reward a player who goes through the entire two-step process of winning a Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier and then competing in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier, we wish to reward players who continue to find other ways to the Pro Tour while they wait for their Regional PTQ. Therefore, if a player wins a Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier but qualifies for the Pro Tour through another method before the round of Regional Pro Tour Qualifiers that they are eligible for, then we will give them the Regional Pro Tour Qualifier promo card at the Pro Tour they qualified for. We will be doing this starting with this weekend's Pro Tour, and are awarding promo cards to eligible players.

Pro Tour Players Club Adjustments

After thorough discussion and evaluation of the Pro Points awarded at individual-format Grand Prix and Pro Tour, we have decided to increase the lowest award levels for Pro Points at these events.

Pro Tours will now award 5 Pro Points to anyone who finishes with 28 or 29 match points, and 4 Pro Points to anyone who finishes with 27 match points.

Individual-format Grand Prix will now award 2 Pro Points to anyone who finishes with 33 to 35 match points, and 1 Pro Point to anyone who finishes with 30 to 32 match points. The Grand Prix cap of a player's best six Pro Point finishes remains in place for Pro Tour Player Club status and the Player of the Year race.

No changes will be made to Pro Points awarded at the World Championship, World Magic Cup, or Team-format Grand Prix.

Please note that these changes will not display correctly on the Planeswalker Points website until the end of the year. Players will be able to see their correct Pro Point totals on the 2015–16 Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year statistics pages.

We have also adjusted the thresholds for each level in the Pro Tour Players Club. The new levels can be found below:

Platinum: 50 Pro Points

Gold: 33 Pro Points

Silver: 18 Pro Points

2016 Grand Prix

Earlier this week, due to unforeseeable circumstances, we unfortunately had to cancel Grand Prix Buenos Aires 2016.

Since we became aware of this, we have been looking for a new location in the Latin America region and found a solution for 2016. We have moved forwarded with adding Grand Prix Costa Rica to the schedule for next year, to take place June 3–5, 2016.

Grand Prix Costa Rica will take place at Hotel Barceló San José Palacio in San José. The format for this Grand Prix will be Standard.

2016 World Championship

As a reminder, on Thursday we announced some changes to the 2016 World Championship seats. If you missed that announcement, I highly recommend taking a look at it. Tiebreakers will be added to the Premier Event Invitation Policy in the next few days.

As always, we will continue to look at ways to improve the programs we offer to players and will make changes accordingly to ensure that we are offering the best possible experience that we can.