Buy ins - Stay at £75? Increase? Decrease? Side events?
£75 + 10% is spot on IMO. Side events have varied from place to place, I"d much rather see £30+10% than the £20+25%!! that we had at Coventry. I"d also like to see more variety rather than NLHE or PLO - I know there was 7CS at Stoke but having registered for the 8.30 game I had to unregister when it started at 7. As we saw in the recent Bunch of Fives games, there are lots of APAT members interested in learning new variants and this would be the ideal stage to do it live for small stakes.
Festival style three and four day events - good? or too long?
Can"t see that I"ll ever be able to play the ECOAP if it stays where it is on the calendar so I can"t really comment, WCOAP is causing its own problems due to its popularity.
Timing - An event every month, every two months, or four big festivals every year maybe?
Personally I"d like to see one every 6 weeks, alongside the two main festivals.
WCOAP - Should it extend further with the addition of two day side events and an even larger main event?
I think this is the toughest question on the list. From a personal point of view I would love to play all the listed tournaments, other than the open and the cash, along with a few others that aren"t listed. However, to accommodate this along with all the other people who haven"t been able to get in, the WCOAP would have to be at least a fortnight long. Add to that the problem of getting time off work, and even more difficult, time out of the family home, and that just isn"t happening. Only other option is, rather than having a festival with a taster of a few games, is split it over 3 or 4 weekends where we get a full game of each variant with no limits on places and just the ME at Easter along with a few minor non-bracelet side events.
Team events - Should we invite multiple teams from same communities? structure?
If we were as over-subscribed as reported then definitely not. I also think that the league winners should maybe get an entry but not 2nd and 3rd. I thought the structure this year was excellent and meant the best team won, not just the team that got 2 to the FT.
Formats - Should we be looking to include anything new? Should we run one of the nationals in a different format, outside of the WCOAP and ECOAP?
Not sure what you mean. I think we should bring back the thing that really set us apart from every other game.....the applause.
Registration - Thoughts on satellites, direct buy in via client, generic satellite packages versus specific satellite packages, should satellites packages include a contribution towards travel and hotel?
I like seat-only satellites. Travel and hotel costs would vary too much from player to player. Unless it was the Western Europe thing you speak of.
Seat reservation - Should this continue? If so, why? If we added a Paypal button to enable players to pay the 10% fee upfront, would this work? So players not taking up their reservation would lose the fee element of their buy in?
I"d like to go back to the days where we paid the whole lot in advance
Locations - Overseas? New locations? For example we could take the ECOAP to Western Europe. Would players come, if destination was cheap and outside of holiday periods?
Loving the sound of this.
Commercial - To increase our budgets we might ask you to qualify for events at a third party site, or join us for a crazy night of blackjack or slots tournaments. Is this acceptable, not acceptable, would stop you playing, etc?
Does qualify mean satellite? If so then that"s fine by me provided it"s not WH after last year. Blackjack & Slots tournaments - not for me thanks.
Awards - Further develop the medals? More bracelets? Differentiate between live and online event awards? Added value?
Medals all seem fine, if you ever get them ahem. Bracelets for World Champions sounds great. As for differentiating between live and online....hell yeah. Huge difference between a £30, 60 runner game online and £75, 150-200 runner game live (and I don"t just mean the ability to wear nothing but pants) and the medals should reflect that.
Merchandise - Should we sell stuff? Shirts, cards, chip set, card protectors? How deep should the range be? High quality or cheap? Would you buy high resolution pictures of yourself at events, branded with the event name, APAT logo and in an APAT sleeve?
I"d be interested in shirts, hoodies or a real quality deck of cards. Photos? No. Did Asa put you up to this?
Other points:
The increase from 10K to 15K in S6 has been brilliant and the structure re-jig that went with it has made for an excellent game. Like others, I would like to see the 1pm Sunday start that was meant to go with it enforced.
I was going to make a plea that one of the festival weekends was moved away from a Bank Holiday weekend so that those of us with families could be at home for either Easter or August BH. I can see now that that is never going to work as, if anything, these need to take up more days, not less.
I will therefore make the plea that all other National weekends are on "normal" weekends. I"m sure I"m not alone when I go missing for a "Des" weekend, the wife only notices I"m not there on the days she has off (Sat and Sun), whereas if she"s off on the BH Monday or even the Friday as well, I"m in for some grief.
I did have a few extra points to make but they have slipped away from me for now.