I have a question for people who have been running events at gencon, particularly their first year doing so.

Last year I had two friends organize a Larp and ran it. When they drafted the Larp they set it up to generate enough player hours to cover both of their badges and gencon cut the event down to basically one badge between the two of them.

This year another friend submitted board game events for the first time with enough entries to cover the player hours for his badge, then only had less than half approved which would leave him quite short of the player hours to cover a badge.

Is this routine for first time GMs or were they just unlucky?

I ran into a similar situation last year, but you have to remember that the events coordinators have a wealth of data on past events and usually cut down the numbers when the number of player spots submitted doesn't match with the data they have. In my case I think they were pretty much spot on in estimating the demand. If your event can develop a reputation and show an unmet demand you would probably get a bump in player numbers on a following year. Sadly for me I didn't get very lucky in housing so I let that event go this year as lugging everything down to the convention center to run it was going to be to much hassle.