National Online League - Season 6 Formats

[AJDUK]

hmmm
the team a  b c thing is interesting but I"m not convinced that captains moving players around various teams would work. if i"ve played in all 3 teams at various stages in the season in perhaps different divisions what prizes am i entitled to? If it is to go on overall points, any points gained in div 2 could be seen as worth less than those gained in div 1 if say theres less teams in div 2 + weaker players? I can see some bitter internal team arguements over $$$/added value if it isn"t clear cut and also possible fallouts with captains. Do the captains want so much resposibility? Interesting idea but one of the toughest logistically to manage in a number of ways.
Fixed multiple teams could work but who wants to be in a less than full C team with by definition other weak/new players? Spreading players across team a b c using some form of ranking could work. Don"t fancy being the rankings compiler though.

[technolog]

How about disbanding the Team"s with less than 10 regular players (or any chosen number) like the team that I play for which is London who regularly only have 3 players, myself, wise owl, and LGPN. Once these teams are disbanded the players are then free to join a new team of their choice under option 1. The members of the disbanded clubs could have no complaints, as they have not supported their chosen clubs when they had the chance. I reckon this would reduce the amount of clubs by 35-50% and a league of 15 to 20 teams could be formed from those remaining, all of which would have a new influx of players from the disbanded clubs.

Welcome to "Team Luton" Don

24 minutes? Waz will be turning in his captaincy grave!

[TheSnapper]

hmmm
the team a  b c thing is interesting but I"m not convinced that captains moving players around various teams would work. if i"ve played in all 3 teams at various stages in the season in perhaps different divisions what prizes am i entitled to? If it is to go on overall points, any points gained in div 2 could be seen as worth less than those gained in div 1 if say theres less teams in div 2 + weaker players? I can see some bitter internal team arguements over $$$/added value if it isn"t clear cut and also possible fallouts with captains. Do the captains want so much resposibility? Interesting idea but one of the toughest logistically to manage in a number of ways.
Fixed multiple teams could work but who wants to be in a less than full C team with by definition other weak/new players? Spreading players across team a b c using some form of ranking could work. Don"t fancy being the rankings compiler though.

Moving players within the season would be a decision for the Club but if it added more complication than benefit then we could stick with fixed teams for the entire season. Its one of the reasons why I prefer 20 player teams, I suspect that would be cleaner, less problematic.

Just to Add, I suspect it is unlikely that a top scoring player would be moved from A to B and most likely would move the other direction but this would be a club decision and would have to be agreed locally among players and managers who you would expect to be fully aware of the consequences for individuals involved.

In the team environment I would doubt agreement could be reached on any move that seriously disadvantaged a member. Maybe we could look at how the added value is handled and align this more inline with the team aspect.

[dwh103]

Ok, had some thoughts:

- The problem with ANY league is the drop-off in interest over the course of the season. You can either combat this by swinging a large carrot for individual prizes, or by having a short sharp league.
- I think it would be disappointing to lose the team element that has been built up over the course of the last few years.
- Having a "selection" for each league game puts a massive responsibility on the captains. What do they do if someone reg"s late? When"s the deadline. What is the punishment if they don"t post a player list - loss of team points? Hardly fair on the team members.

My proposal:

- Retain the existing teams, or perhaps, chop some of the lesser supported teams, but preferably retain as many teams as feasibly possible.
- Drop the divisions.
- Retain the $10 buy-in, 75% of the prizepool to play for, and the other 25% goes towards the final.
- At an average of 120 runners per matchday, over 20 matchdays this would generate $6k for the final. Pop a bit of added value here too?

Mechanics:

- Assuming the season is ~12 months long, play 5 mini-leagues of 4 matchdays each. At the end of the league, tot up the points and allocate to the top 25% of teams (so currently the top 5 teams would get 5, 4, 3, 2, 1). Include a similar restriction as the current format (only top 6 players or whatever can score team points).
- Reset the team points after each league
- At the end of the season, any team that has scored a point qualifies for the final.
- Team points obtain relate to starting stack size. 1 point gets you 5,000 chips, each additional point gives each team member an additional 500 chips.
- Captain then picks x players from his team to compete in said final - this could be online or live and suitably deepstacked. Team member has to have played in a certain number of games. To make it simple it should probably be the top 4 points scorers.

Individual league runs through the whole season and is not reset at any point. Pay a large number of points positions (say top 40) - it looks nice to a casual player if they"re scoring a few points and on a leaderboard.

Individual winner gets a nice bit of added value. Next 10 players in the individual list play a SNG for some more (WCOAP passport perhaps) and an MTT for the same for those who"ve played 75% of the matchdays.

As long as individuals are suitably incentivised then even if the team is fairing badly there should be enough encouragement to play (just rewarding the individual winner isn"t enough imo. 1 player out of hundreds isn"t going to get many people chasing the glory).

The short leagues mean APAT can remove a team mid-way through the season and reallocate numbers if one team is only getting one or two runners.

Short leagues will always give the clubs something to aim for. Just one point to get to the final, easier to sell for Captains trying to get people to play "Just one short push for 4 weeks and we can lock up a final place - only need to come top 5 too" etc. Teams who"ve already qualified have the incentive to get more chips for the final and keep other teams out of the points positions.

Big clubs will obviously have the advantage and get to the final with more chips, but they won"t have an overwhelming advantage.

Finally, and one of the biggest points imo - Make the League visible, get some articles on the front page, a link to the standings perhaps. Make it clear to visitors that there is a league. Champion the winners, give them some exposure. This is going to be the starting point at APAT for a lot of people - make them feel good!

[Waz1892]

How about disbanding the Team"s with less than 10 regular players (or any chosen number) like the team that I play for which is London who regularly only have 3 players, myself, wise owl, and LGPN. Once these teams are disbanded the players are then free to join a new team of their choice under option 1. The members of the disbanded clubs could have no complaints, as they have not supported their chosen clubs when they had the chance. I reckon this would reduce the amount of clubs by 35-50% and a league of 15 to 20 teams could be formed from those remaining, all of which would have a new influx of players from the disbanded clubs.

Welcome to "Team Luton" Don

24 minutes? Waz will be turning in his captaincy grave!

....And the training sessions went so well. Oh well back to the drawing board

[lucasj37]

Ok, had some thoughts:

- The problem with ANY league is the drop-off in interest over the course of the season. You can either combat this by swinging a large carrot for individual prizes, or by having a short sharp league.
- I think it would be disappointing to lose the team element that has been built up over the course of the last few years.
- Having a "selection" for each league game puts a massive responsibility on the captains. What do they do if someone reg"s late? When"s the deadline. What is the punishment if they don"t post a player list - loss of team points? Hardly fair on the team members.

My proposal:

- Retain the existing teams, or perhaps, chop some of the lesser supported teams, but preferably retain as many teams as feasibly possible.
- Drop the divisions.
- Retain the $10 buy-in, 75% of the prizepool to play for, and the other 25% goes towards the final.
- At an average of 120 runners per matchday, over 20 matchdays this would generate $6k for the final. Pop a bit of added value here too?

Mechanics:

- Assuming the season is ~12 months long, play 5 mini-leagues of 4 matchdays each. At the end of the league, tot up the points and allocate to the top 25% of teams (so currently the top 5 teams would get 5, 4, 3, 2, 1). Include a similar restriction as the current format (only top 6 players or whatever can score team points).
- Reset the team points after each league
- At the end of the season, any team that has scored a point qualifies for the final.
- Team points obtain relate to starting stack size. 1 point gets you 5,000 chips, each additional point gives each team member an additional 500 chips.
- Captain then picks x players from his team to compete in said final - this could be online or live and suitably deepstacked. Team member has to have played in a certain number of games. To make it simple it should probably be the top 4 points scorers.

Individual league runs through the whole season and is not reset at any point. Pay a large number of points positions (say top 40) - it looks nice to a casual player if they"re scoring a few points and on a leaderboard.

Individual winner gets a nice bit of added value. Next 10 players in the individual list play a SNG for some more (WCOAP passport perhaps) and an MTT for the same for those who"ve played 75% of the matchdays.

As long as individuals are suitably incentivised then even if the team is fairing badly there should be enough encouragement to play (just rewarding the individual winner isn"t enough imo. 1 player out of hundreds isn"t going to get many people chasing the glory).

The short leagues mean APAT can remove a team mid-way through the season and reallocate numbers if one team is only getting one or two runners.

Short leagues will always give the clubs something to aim for. Just one point to get to the final, easier to sell for Captains trying to get people to play "Just one short push for 4 weeks and we can lock up a final place - only need to come top 5 too" etc. Teams who"ve already qualified have the incentive to get more chips for the final and keep other teams out of the points positions.

Big clubs will obviously have the advantage and get to the final with more chips, but they won"t have an overwhelming advantage.

Finally, and one of the biggest points imo - Make the League visible, get some articles on the front page, a link to the standings perhaps. Make it clear to visitors that there is a league. Champion the winners, give them some exposure. This is going to be the starting point at APAT for a lot of people - make them feel good!

Great post!

My thoughts;

I agree team identity is a must.

The games need to be easily managed.

Clubs should not be penalised too heavily for recruiting well. Though there needs to be incentives to carry on playing when your team can no longer win league.

I personally do not think winnings should be split amongst all team members. Doing so a player could come bottom every week (contribute nothing in points) yet be a member of the winning team and be in profit. Whereas a good player in a weak team would lose an incentive to play.

An incentive to keep playing would be to have a live final where all teams are invited and chip stacks are determined by results and players qualify via points gained for their team and not picked by the captain.

[RicayBoy]

I really hope APAT think very carefully before they consider making some of the possible changes.

It seems to me that many people want to make the strong (in numbers) teams weaker, but surely a far more progressive approach is to try and make the weak teams stronger. The simplest way to do this would the basic option 1 scenario to create "regions" that are roughly equal in numbers. It doesn"t have to be exact - West Midlands demonstrated that the team with the most runners is not guaranteed a win, but equally a team of six is not viable against a team of 22. Player recruitment needs to be easy and encouraged otherwise eventually what is underneath will whither and die. Why on earth do people want a race to the bottom?

A B and C teams with restricted numbers (say 10 a side) is a horrible idea in my book. It creates exactly the situation you are trying to avoid - last seasons team of 14 becomes a 10 and 4 with no chance - a team of 22 becomes two tens, two get f**ked off and leave and new recruitment is impossible because until you"ve got 7 or 8 it"s not worth bothering. Whilst there are very few mugs in APAT I wouldn"t be surprised if West Mids saw some "dead money" benefit in some of the larger teams.

The individual element needs to remain and possibly increase as I said before, that would create an interesting dynamic between the needs of the individual and that of the team. If it is decided to rip up what"s gone before and start completely afresh will APAT consider running an individual online league at a reasonable buy-in to run alongside the new "team" game?

[Curlarge]

How about disbanding the Team"s with less than 10 regular players (or any chosen number) like the team that I play for which is London who regularly only have 3 players, myself, wise owl, and LGPN. Once these teams are disbanded the players are then free to join a new team of their choice under option 1. The members of the disbanded clubs could have no complaints, as they have not supported their chosen clubs when they had the chance. I reckon this would reduce the amount of clubs by 35-50% and a league of 15 to 20 teams could be formed from those remaining, all of which would have a new influx of players from the disbanded clubs.

Welcome to "Team Luton" Don

24 minutes? Waz will be turning in his captaincy grave!

....And the training sessions went so well. Oh well back to the drawing board

Sorry Waz, I know I was a little slow off the blocks with this one, but socks are being pulled up as I type

[TheSnapper]

Let's first of all recognise that we will naturally look at any proposed change from our current position and tend to rationalise from essentially a defensive position. I was tempted to build another long multi-quote post countering the various opinions and requests but that would likely come across as personal and further entrench some of the many well minded contributors in this a quintessentially Apat healthy discussion.

Is it safe to say that we all agree some change is needed, that only small change is necessary and since it's an Apat event we needn't worry that this is our only chance to effect change, sure we are a perpetually evolving community so no need to rush into drastic change.

Do we agree that when a team's numerical disadvantage passes the ~2/1 tipping point it becomes virtually insurmountable? Is this the priority area that needs addressing so as to maintain an equitable yet competitive format?

To this point we have had varied opinions and a good example of the natural tendency for self preservation is the much asserted opinion that we should preserve the bigger teams identity by closing the small teams and thus erasing their equally valued identity. Do we have to dissolve the teams that cannot currently compete? Sure some would welcome it in the absence of an alternative but would that be fair?

Various parties can view the pros and cons of the proposals and let's be honest, there are always going to be cons no matter how hard we try or how clever we are about it.

All that said; why not try out a small change for season 6..

Teams of 20

Multiple teams per Club permissible

A, B & C Teams nominated for the entire Season

• Points system remains


• Big teams retain identity


• Small teams retain identity


• Teams that want to dissolve can move to where suits them best


• Numerical advantage redressed yet still a beneficial factor


• Competing is attainable and sustainable for teams of 10


• Provides more scope for an expanded league

We can and will then evalute and further tweak at seasons end in the Season 7 discussion thread.

[Foggy]

If it is not broken, then why try and fix it?

[Waz1892]

My concern with A B C"s teams is that it is alot for Captains to do and to manage.  And we"ve already seen some clubs don"t have a "visable" captain to levels of other clubs.

With the number of current captains stepping down, I"m not sure this format will encourage new captains??

With APAT being as it is; an evolving growing community, I also don"t like the idea of restriction of numbers in teams.

It is already a level playing field as everyone has access to everyone that is interested in playing online poker.  And I believe the "big clubs" already had there wings clipped with the introduction (and rightly so) of the "top 4 only score rule.  This negates the numbers count situ (WM proved this in Div 1) to a degree.

The likes of Glasgow, Sunderland, Carlisle and Luton, have had huge increases in numbers to the clubs and thus to APAT as a whole and have added to the APAT community, surely this is the way forward.

So I believe the focus should be on growing the "smaller clubs" not clipping the big clubs.  By growing them APAT grows the league grows - isn"t that what it is all about?

And going forward into S7 & S8 (annoucement soon as I understand  ) couldn"t we go back to the original idea of the clubs playing at the local live events as in the earlier seasons.   It didn"t work so well that time around, but wow how the league has grown since?

[TheSnapper]

My concern with A B C"s teams is that it is alot for Captains to do and to manage.  And we"ve already seen some clubs don"t have a "visable" captain to levels of other clubs.

With the number of current captains stepping down, I"m not sure this format will encourage new captains??

With APAT being as it is; an evolving growing community, I also don"t like the idea of restriction of numbers in teams.

It is already a level playing field as everyone has access to everyone that is interested in playing online poker.  And I believe the "big clubs" already had there wings clipped with the introduction (and rightly so) of the "top 4 only score rule.  This negates the numbers count situ (WM proved this in Div 1) to a degree.

The likes of Glasgow, Sunderland, Carlisle and Luton, have had huge increases in numbers to the clubs and thus to APAT as a whole and have added to the APAT community, surely this is the way forward.

So I believe the focus should be on growing the "smaller clubs" not clipping the big clubs.  By growing them APAT grows the league grows - isn"t that what it is all about?

And going forward into S7 & S8 (annoucement soon as I understand  ) couldn"t we go back to the original idea of the clubs playing at the local live events as in the earlier seasons.   It didn"t work so well that time around, but wow how the league has grown since?

If it is not broken, then why try and fix it?

I give up

[Mikeyboy9361]

If it is not broken, then why try and fix it?

LOL, in principle I agree, but there are a lot of improvements that can be made, and many of the ideas expressed are very good, particularly the A and B team scenario espoused by Brendan.
Waz the local live games were great, and was my first introduction to live poker, and the G in Manchester was packed for these events, but TBH I am pretty sure they have been consigned to history.

[Waz1892]

My concern with A B C"s teams is that it is alot for Captains to do and to manage.  And we"ve already seen some clubs don"t have a "visable" captain to levels of other clubs.

With the number of current captains stepping down, I"m not sure this format will encourage new captains??

With APAT being as it is; an evolving growing community, I also don"t like the idea of restriction of numbers in teams.

It is already a level playing field as everyone has access to everyone that is interested in playing online poker.  And I believe the "big clubs" already had there wings clipped with the introduction (and rightly so) of the "top 4 only score rule.  This negates the numbers count situ (WM proved this in Div 1) to a degree.
The likes of Glasgow, Sunderland, Carlisle and Luton, have had huge increases in numbers to the clubs and thus to APAT as a whole and have added to the APAT community, surely this is the way forward.

So I believe the focus should be on growing the "smaller clubs" not clipping the big clubs.  By growing them APAT grow

the league grows - isn"t that what it is all about?

And going forward into S7 & S8 (annoucement soon as I understand  ) couldn"t we go back to the original idea of the clubs playing at the local live events as in the earlier seasons.   It didn"t work so well that time around, but wow how the league has grown since?

If it is not broken, then why try and fix it?

I give up

Please don"t feel like that!!

I wasn"t meaning to be negative, the complete opposite, and it wasn"t a diss about your ideas, which Ardmore than workable, I was just expressing my own thoughts.

[TheSnapper]

My concern with A B C"s teams is that it is alot for Captains to do and to manage.  And we"ve already seen some clubs don"t have a "visable" captain to levels of other clubs.

With the number of current captains stepping down, I"m not sure this format will encourage new captains??

With APAT being as it is; an evolving growing community, I also don"t like the idea of restriction of numbers in teams.

It is already a level playing field as everyone has access to everyone that is interested in playing online poker.  And I believe the "big clubs" already had there wings clipped with the introduction (and rightly so) of the "top 4 only score rule.  This negates the numbers count situ (WM proved this in Div 1) to a degree.
The likes of Glasgow, Sunderland, Carlisle and Luton, have had huge increases in numbers to the clubs and thus to APAT as a whole and have added to the APAT community, surely this is the way forward.

So I believe the focus should be on growing the "smaller clubs" not clipping the big clubs.  By growing them APAT grow

the league grows - isn"t that what it is all about?

And going forward into S7 & S8 (annoucement soon as I understand  ) couldn"t we go back to the original idea of the clubs playing at the local live events as in the earlier seasons.   It didn"t work so well that time around, but wow how the league has grown since?

If it is not broken, then why try and fix it?

I give up

Please don"t feel like that!!

I wasn"t meaning to be negative, the complete opposite, and it wasn"t a diss about your ideas, which Ardmore than workable, I was just expressing my own thoughts.

Its not that you are being negative, but we can"t keep going round in circles. Basically and by varying degrees, those affiliated to bigger teams see no need for change while those attached to the smaller clubs clamour for it.

as far as Foggy"s comment, it is totally f**king deluded to state that "it"s not broken"

More than 50% of teams scored 0 points.
Captains are resigning in their droves.
Player retention is abysmal despite trojan efforts at recruiting.