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I know for a fact that there were players that flew across the country (some twice) in order to play in circuit events BECAUSE of the TOC freeroll that they could qualify into. YES there are people who, if sponsorship information was made public ahead of time, wouldn't have gone to the circuit events and would have played the 10k events that were going on at the same time closer to where they lived, and would have gone to Harrahs/ESPN/Pepsi/whomever and asked to be one of the exemptions.


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I can see some high profile players asking for exemptions rather than play. I have a very hard time believing someone is dumb enough to travel across the country because of the TOC. I guess I'll believe you but how many could there possibly be? I mean christ, take the equity of the players in the TOC and divide that into the entire player pool for the circuit events. Someone here determined the equity to be $50. I don't swear by that but it has to be in the right neighborhood. The *only* way the TOC would be a deciding factor is if you had already played some circuit events and all you needed to guarantee your TOC seat was to play another.