Season Seven Seat Reservation

[AMRN]

We"ve had a disappointing situation here at Wembley, with only around 50 of the 80 odd players on the this morning"s reserve list turning up by kick off.  Not good for our credibility with DTD I"m afraid, who had already allocated APAT the smallest pod as to quote one of the managers "we know what your players are like".  I"d prefer if we had more options available, but I feel we"re being pushed into a corner on this with an outcome like today and we may well need you guys to work with us on this going forward.

FWIW It"s disappointing but for me, both this event & the main event was way out of my bankroll & expenses. It"s sad because it"s a great idea but surely this was aimed at the grass roots to create the volume & sadly the cost was not grassroots imo.

It was out of my bankroll also..... however I think Des" point is not that they struggled to get the numbers... it"s more to do with the fact that 80 people reserved seats on the thread, but then only 50 of them turned up on the day.........

[AAroddersAA]

Whilst the system is people can reserve a seat by posting their name on a forum and then not turn up with no penalty at all then this is always going to happen, it is just the reality unfortunately. DTD are correct that this is not really an acceptable situation and will hurt APAT's credibility with the casino"s which is something that must not happen. You cannot tell venues that you will have 80 players turn up and then only have 50.

APAT therefore have to protect themselves and their customers and until something better is suggested I would say the reservation charge is the way to go to prevent this happening. I can"t really see a better solution,people are not obliged to use it but it would prevent this situation.

[AMRN]

Whilst the system is people can reserve a seat by posting their name on a forum and then not turn up with no penalty at all then this is always going to happen, it is just the reality unfortunately. DTD are correct that this is not really an acceptable situation and will hurt APAT's credibility with the casino"s which is something that must not happen. You cannot tell venues that you will have 80 players turn up and then only have 50.

APAT therefore have to protect themselves and their customers and until something better is suggested I would say the reservation charge is the way to go to prevent this happening. I can"t really see a better solution,people are not obliged to use it but it would prevent this situation.

Obviously something needs to change - I don"t think anyone suggests otherwise...... however, I think the feeling is generally against charging a fee. I would be happy to make a commitment ahead of time when reserving a seat, but believe that this should be a deposit (non refundable).... so if it"s a £5 charge, that needs to then be discounted from the final price.

I suspect that new players looking for their first steps on the tour would be far more amenable to paying a deposit as opposed to have to pay an additional fee.

[Mikeyboy9361]

Very disappointing I agree, but why was this such a high buy in? I am sure regular APATers would have loved the chance to be part of this fantastic occasion, and made it a sell out.

[Laxie]

Very disappointing I agree, but why was this such a high buy in? I am sure regular APATers would have loved the chance to be part of this fantastic occasion, and made it a sell out.

Very much agree with this.  No way our house could afford two buy ins at yesterday"s level so didn"t even consider it.  However, if it had been normal APAT buy in, we"d have struggled to miss such a special occasion.

[Des]

We"ve had a disappointing situation here at Wembley, with only around 50 of the 80 odd players on the this morning"s reserve list turning up by kick off.  Not good for our credibility with DTD I"m afraid, who had already allocated APAT the smallest pod as to quote one of the managers "we know what your players are like".  I"d prefer if we had more options available, but I feel we"re being pushed into a corner on this with an outcome like today and we may well need you guys to work with us on this going forward.

FWIW It"s disappointing but for me, both this event & the main event was way out of my bankroll & expenses. It"s sad because it"s a great idea but surely this was aimed at the grass roots to create the volume & sadly the cost was not grassroots imo.

It was out of my bankroll also..... however I think Des" point is not that they struggled to get the numbers... it"s more to do with the fact that 80 people reserved seats on the thread, but then only 50 of them turned up on the day.........

Correct, I"m definitely not disappointed with the numbers overall...the prize pool is larger than a typical 200 runner APAT, my concern was more that people who had a change of heart or plans, could have taken their name off the reserve list by Friday night.  That would have enabled us to know where we are and communicate accurately to DTD.  As it were, they weren"t confident enough to give us anything other than the smallest pod on the field and as we approached the event start they were asking questions about where the additional 30 players were and we were left scratching our heads.  Not that comfortable a position to be in.

[Des]

Whilst the system is people can reserve a seat by posting their name on a forum and then not turn up with no penalty at all then this is always going to happen, it is just the reality unfortunately. DTD are correct that this is not really an acceptable situation and will hurt APAT's credibility with the casino"s which is something that must not happen. You cannot tell venues that you will have 80 players turn up and then only have 50.

APAT therefore have to protect themselves and their customers and until something better is suggested I would say the reservation charge is the way to go to prevent this happening. I can"t really see a better solution,people are not obliged to use it but it would prevent this situation.

Obviously something needs to change - I don"t think anyone suggests otherwise...... however, I think the feeling is generally against charging a fee. I would be happy to make a commitment ahead of time when reserving a seat, but believe that this should be a deposit (non refundable).... so if it"s a £5 charge, that needs to then be discounted from the final price.

I suspect that new players looking for their first steps on the tour would be far more amenable to paying a deposit as opposed to have to pay an additional fee.

Your suggestion means the £5 would need to be forwarded to the casino Steve, and that would need to happen two weeks before kick off and the event taken off sale at that point.

[Des]

Very disappointing I agree, but why was this such a high buy in? I am sure regular APATers would have loved the chance to be part of this fantastic occasion, and made it a sell out.

Very much agree with this.  No way our house could afford two buy ins at yesterday"s level so didn"t even consider it.  However, if it had been normal APAT buy in, we"d have struggled to miss such a special occasion.

We couldn"t have held the event with the typical APAT buy in...the option wasn"t there.  As it is we have the cheapest event of the 15 at Wembley and we worked very hard to get the two prime days of Saturday and Sunday.  However we knew the buy in would be out of the range of many of the members but still felt it important to be here for all sorts of reasons.  We also knew that a percentage of our players would be interested in playing at the higher buy in, as has been seen here and at DTD.  However, we"ve also added the next APAT event in the same month, possibly a first for separate Championships, as we wanted everyone to have an event available at the start of season seven.  If it had been possible however, we would definitely have run this event with the standard APAT buy in.

[Curlarge]

Had an interesting chat with Rob Yong whilst standing in the queue to buy-into the event yesterday. He said he couldn"t understand why they hadn"t just put an entry holding tank on their poker site and we all just bought in there, which is pretty much what I had suggested as an option earlier on here.

Seems it is do-able from their point of view.

[Des]

Maybe a system of fines for people who reserve and then cancel?  If they fail to pay the fine, they lose their right to reserve in future.  That way you"re not penalising everyone who turned up.

I just don"t think this works Dawn.  Can you imagine the team and I starting off next week by chasing down 30 players to pay a fine?  We"d become a police state overnight and that"s the last thing we want.  

[Des]

It seems to me that while everyone is beginning to understand our wish to keep the events on sale for as long as possible, and our wish to cut down on the administration and to add a light commitment factor; player concern surrounds the need to pay an extra £5.

Has anyone considered that being able to book an event several months in advance would enable you to make a far greater saving in advance hotel and travel costs?

Now I appreciate a fiver is an additional cost for everyone, but that"s the cost of a sandwich or the Sunday newspapers or the booking fee to many shows or sporting events.  We have to rank equal to at least one of those experiences in your lives surely?  I"m beginning to think not and that saddens me.

[Des]

Had an interesting chat with Rob Yong whilst standing in the queue to buy-into the event yesterday. He said he couldn"t understand why they hadn"t just put an entry holding tank on their poker site and we all just bought in there, which is pretty much what I had suggested as an option earlier on here.

Seems it is do-able from their point of view.

Rob said the same thing to me yesterday Rich, but it was the furthest thing from his mind two days, weeks or months ago. 

While this might be an option in some circumstances, those will be extremely rare.  And it brings with it the potential for lots of other business conflicts.  So it really isn"t as straight forward as it may appear. 

Can I just clarify on one other question that was raised a couple of days ago back in the thread.  Using DTD as an example, if players were reserving seats for a number of WCOAP events for example, they would only be charged one reservation fee.  If they are at the venue we know players are very much more likely to play the events they have reserved.

This isn"t about money for APAT, it"s about ensuring we operate as efficiently as possible.

[TheSnapper]

While the post mortem is understandable I cant help but feel that this event was not your typical Apat offering.

Firstly we had the tainted ISPT history, we also had a considerable increase in buy in, combined, these factors were somewhat of a disincentive.

As for the £5 booking charge, I think it"s a great idea and carries lots of implied odds, I"m pretty sure if implemented it will enable me to make a decent profit on reduced hotel and travel costs.

[AMRN]

It seems to me that while everyone is beginning to understand our wish to keep the events on sale for as long as possible, and our wish to cut down on the administration and to add a light commitment factor; player concern surrounds the need to pay an extra £5.

Has anyone considered that being able to book an event several months in advance would enable you to make a far greater saving in advance hotel and travel costs?

Now I appreciate a fiver is an additional cost for everyone, but that"s the cost of a sandwich or the Sunday newspapers or the booking fee to many shows or sporting events.  We have to rank equal to at least one of those experiences in your lives surely?  I"m beginning to think not and that saddens me.

Perhaps yes for the rank and file APAT member..... but I still see it as a turn-off for the potential new members.

When I"m playing APAT events, I often have locals asking me what it"s about, and I do my best to give the hard sell. I always direct them to apat.com and the forum. If they arrive there looking for the next stop on the tour and are invited to pay an additional fiver on top of their 10% reg fee, I suspect that would be an immediate turn-off for many - they would simply draw comparison to their local tourney where they don"t have to spend extra.   OK they don"t need to reserve a seat and can take their chances on availability, however with the thought in their head already, the turn-off will be out there....

[TheSnapper]

Perhaps yes for the rank and file APAT member..... but I still see it as a turn-off for the potential new members.

When I"m playing APAT events, I often have locals asking me what it"s about, and I do my best to give the hard sell. I always direct them to apat.com and the forum. If they arrive there looking for the next stop on the tour and are invited to pay an additional fiver on top of their 10% reg fee, I suspect that would be an immediate turn-off for many - they would simply draw comparison to their local tourney where they don"t have to spend extra.   OK they don"t need to reserve a seat and can take their chances on availability, however with the thought in their head already, the turn-off will be out there....

I think you underestimate the value of a guaranteed seat tbh Steve.