NEW Organized Play Changes

Doing the Math.
sPTQ=Sub-PTQ = Feeder events.
rPTQ = Regional PTQ

THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Toronto has a population of about 3.5M people. Those people are served by 30 stores according to site location on Wizards (was actually easy to find with google!). I assume that 90% of the stores can and will host the sPTQs. An rPTQ has to cover about 20.6M in NA assuming it covers an equal fraction (16 rPTQs for 340M people in NA).

So that means we expect the rPTQ to average about 160 people in attendance (triggering the 128 cap). If the cap is not triggered (variance in attendance or less than 90% of stores hold sPTQs) than things are worse for most people.

Consider a “grinder”. This player will attend up to 10 sPTQs and has a 10% chance to win all of them. He also has a 8% (1.5x a 8/160 chance) chance to top 8 the rPTQ (reflecting his skill relative to increased difficulty).

Expected Cost of Qualifying:
6.5 Local sPTQs (sub 1.5 hr travel) + 1 rPTQ (65% of the time).
5% net probability of qualifying (you can increase to 7.1% chance if you attend all 27 sPTQs).

OLD WORLD ORDER
Grinder is willing to travel to 6 PTQs a season (everything <4 hours away). Has a probability of winning the PTQ = 2%.

Expected Cost of Qualifying:
6 PTQs (since low prob of winning).
11% Chance of Qualifying (this falls to 5.9% if you are only willing to attend 3 PTQs).

TL;DR
You will have less travel time per event. But spend more time on Magic. You are about ½ as likely to qualify if attended 6 ptqs a season. But only about 1% less likely if you attended 3 PTQs (though your magic time is now 3x).