Well, this thread caught my attention.
Here's the scoop. Ken Horton, a level 3 judge from Eugene (OR) has been getting a lot of pressure from his wife to not spend so much time organizing tournaments. He has been organizing all of the tournaments in Eugene and for the final few tournaments, he ran them in Portland.
Now, I live in Vancouver, WA, which is just across the river from Portland. I am a level 2 judge. Unfortunately, I have the same problem that Ken did. However, I don't really care about organizing, so my interest is simply in the judging, so I am willing to run events as a level 3 judge when and if that happens. That would mean tournaments back in Portland (and advancement for those interested).
What's the problem? Good question. I'm not really sure other than circumstance. See, I've been trying to become a level 3 judge for a few years now. The level 3 judge that I was working under just happened to be quite disorganized so, while I got back positive feedback, I didn't really get any direction or specifics of what needed to happen to "make it happen" so to speak. I kept trying to push him and he kept promising to get paperwork in, but never did. He has since effectively retired as a judge.
I worked at the same time with another level 3 judge, but not specifically for anything he was running, so he didn't pay enough attention to feel comfortable recommending me.
Then, I started working with Ken. That looked promising until he decided to stop running the tournaments as well. Basically, every time I get close, I have to start over again.
Having a wife and 4 children, I can't just pop on up to Seattle at a moment's notice. If I had some commitment from our friends up there as to what path I needed to take and what promises I received in return, I would pursue it. Until then, I'm not really sure we will ever get a level 3 judge again.
BTW, I have a friend that commented on the lack of level 3 judges in this area and he was told that Ken was still registered as a judge. Apparently, WotC doesn't track active vs. inactive for judges that simply retire.
One final note - you don't have to be a level 3 judge to run a pre-release. We contacted a few people at WotC and we were told that they were planning on running an Apocolypse pre-release in Portland. They had a couple of groups they were considering to run the tournament (including my group) and they promised to get back to us. In fact, we were informed that they would probably visit and interview us. Anyway, I suppose plans changed because that was shortly after the Planeshift pre-release and we never heard from them again.
Eric Bess
level 2 judge
Vancouver, WA