It didn"t feel that players were taking longer than expected on my table last night.
Just an observation though:
Last week the structure was 5k chips/15 min blinds. A few people complained but most were happy. APAT decided to discuss with the team captains. Understandable, but it is unofficially expected that the team captains rail to the end from what I read. Ergo, these people are slightly biased to the shorter clock, hence the change.
This week the clock was 4k/12m. Lots of people complained and a few are happy, most notably from the European team, team captains and a few who have an early start. Numbers also dropped by approximately 10-15%.
APAT are never going to be able to please everybody - but I have an idea.
Week 1 was 5k/15m
Week 2 was 4k/12m
Week 3 could be 5k/12m
Week 4 could be 4k/15m
Week 5 could be 3k/10m with the other structure proposed (this is assuming that 1. people are still complaining, and 2. APAT are still looking to make everyone happy)
Announce this now so people like Brian Yates (no offence against you personally Brian, but it"s your major point) know exactly what the structure is and what week is what.
Then, after Week 5, put a poll up for EVERYBODY. Not just captains, not just a select few, EVERYBODY. Spam it on the email"s/PM"s and get as many people in as possible to vote. 1 vote per forum account. Results not to be seen until the day before.
The winning structure is the one used for the remaining 10 weeks.
Well us "select few" and "slightly biased people" agreed as far as I can see, on our secretive captains board, to my proposal of 5k/12mins. There was a proposal, and support for 4k/12mins, but Des asked for agreement on 5k/12mins, which most accepted.
"Ergo", I can"t quite see how or why we played a 4k/12min game, as it plainly wasn"t the majority of captains preference.
Thanks for informing us of that Rich - and I hope I haven"t pissed you off as that definitely wasn"t my intention to come across that way.
I just feel that a public poll (which we know APAT can do well through the awards) should be better and fairer than just the captains voting. It doesn"t take long to set up.
I"ve been reading on the blog board and the various regional boards - and I would say the majority of views are that the structure was too fast. This may have been because by the first break (end of late reg, pretty much) BB/Starting Stack ratio was 1:20. Over half the field was gone by the second break - that"s only 1h 50m of play. Yes, the tournament took
45m to complete total, but for those who did not cash, their evening was pretty much over by 10pm.
Again, people see 6hrs total as a tournament and are happy. It is only about 20 people that play longer than 4hrs I would reckon. I would be interested to know how many people made the final 3 tables both weeks, and would be surprised if it was more than 3, if any at all.
I"ve just loaded up my HEM as I finished in 125th place (so in the top 20%) in the first week (5k/15m). My finishing time was
9.57pm. I assume from this that the money was made before 11pm and that the last 3 tables before midnight.
Tournaments always run slower at the end. The average BB goes up and people always take more time as every hand means more. This affects the few. It just seems that we"re alienating the many for the few! Yeah, I have to get up for work at 6.30am every day, including a Monday. If I get less sleep cos I"ve made the final table - that"s a balance I have to deal with. It"s one of the few bad points about playing the league. If you don"t like it, don"t play.
My viewpoint is that keeping this structure will cost more players than losing players who feel they can"t play because they might make the final table, and as we"re trying to keep numbers up - go back to the 1st week"s structure please.
