Qualification for the 2012 United States Men's Curling Championship took place in two rounds in January at various locations throughout the nation. The number of entrants to the national championships was cut down to eleven teams through a playdown system of regional qualifiers and a challenge round. Qualification system As with last year, teams qualified for the men's nationals either by qualifying automatically as one of the top two teams on the World Curling Tour Order of Merit, by qualifying through a regional qualifier, or by qualifying through the challenge round. The two teams that qualified automatically to the championships were chosen based on the Order of Merit upon the conclusion of the Curl Mesabi Cash Spiel. This year, the teams were those skipped by Tyler George and Craig Brown. The other eight spots in the nationals were awarded as follows: five were awarded to the top finishers in the regional qualifiers, and three were awarded to the top finishers in the challenge round. The qualification rounds were all held with the double knockout provision in place. The double knockout provision states that a team is eliminated from qualifying for the nationals if the team has at least two losses in their win-loss record. If there are teams with less than two losses, they will play each other until the number of teams still able to qualify matches the number of qualification spots available. Regional qualifiers The qualifiers were held from January 4 to 8 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Seattle, Washington, Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Laurel, Maryland, given that at least five teams sign up at each qualifier. If there were less than five teams signed up at any site, the qualifier at that site would have been cancelled, and teams could either be moved to an alternate site or cancel their registration. Qualifiers with more than ten teams would have been held in a knockout format, and qualifiers with less than ten teams would have been held in a round robin format. Each qualifier site was awarded one or more qualification spots to the nationals based on the strength of field at each qualifier site. The strength of field of each team was calculated using Order of Merit points, past participation in national championships and world championships, and final ranks at past national championships. In total, five teams qualified from the four regional qualifiers, and eight teams moved