S8 Live Tour Discussion Thread

[HERBIEHACKIT]

euro off and playing
scot working not playing
wcoap need schedule before i commit but will be there for something i think.

[Paulie_D]

is it safe to assume the home nations and euro team games will be played on thurs and fri prior to main events or have they been dropped.

My assumption is that if they are not listed as separate items they have been dropped.

Without further confirmation from Tom, I would be assuming that the only team events would be the Forum Event and the Worlds.

At least that"s my reading of it from the feedback APAT received about S7.

[Des]

Thanks for the feedback as always guys.  It"s your tour, so we count on it.  I"ll go through the thread and add my feedback where requested. 

Finally, thanks to Tom who put a lot of effort into tying the season up pretty quickly after Stratford.

[Des]

LOving the ten day WCOAP...hoping loads of non NLHE events to keep me busy there next Easter

We"ll definitely have a large non NLHE schedule on offer here Simon.  We"ll take the next couple months to tie up all of the details before putting it on sale in September.

[Paulie_D]

Thanks for the feedback as always guys.  It"s your tour, so we count on it.  I"ll go through the thread and add my feedback where requested. 

Finally, thanks to Tom who put a lot of effort into tying the season up pretty quickly after Stratford.

+1 for Tom.

I bet he"s wrung out right now...the finishing touches weren"t put in place until the very last minute before the deadline. I was half convinced there were going to be some "TBC"s in there.

[Des]

Wd guys excellent work..

WCOAP 10 days!! Wowsers @16 events.. Obv it"s months away, but if you know the events is there any spoilers what the events will be and roughly the spread?  Gonna take a lot of planning (saving) so the sooner the better  

16 events was the S7 schedule...fairly confident we will top that with 4 additional days added!  

[Des]

Pot Limit Omaha first  The two day Irish Amateur Poker Championship will be played in the Pot Limit Omaha format, a first for APAT.  In another first, the two day festival will take place at a hotel - Bewleys Hotel, Dublin Airport -and feature a series of mixed side events and round the clock cash games.

Any chance you can share the logic for this mutation Tom?

First instinct, bit of a slap in the face for us few loyal Irish Apat"rs.

Definitely not intended as a slap in the face to Irish members Brendan and my apologies if you"ve taken it that way.  That"s the last thing we"d want to do.

Truth is, we"ve failed to deliver a significant event in Ireland over the past two to three years and I had actually told the guys to pull the leg this year, for the reason that I felt it important to simplify the overall schedule and commit to delivering the events we were focusing on, to a higher quality. 

I"ve always wanted to do a big Irish event and felt that S9 would be the time to do it, when we hadn"t so many other projects to work on like merging our websites etc, as we do this year.

When Tom came back with an Irish event with a difference - PLO, in a hotel setting by the airport, and with the support of an Irish promoter, then I was happy to see it included.  To make the event stand out on the Irish calendar it needed a point of difference - hence the decision to go with PLO. 

Time will tell whether that was a bad decision or not, but I"m sure we had to do something bold to give us a chance of gaining some traction in Ireland after a pretty lean time of late.

[Des]

Just to add to the last couple of posts, I would most definitely like to play a 2 day plo comp as part of the schedule, but having it for the Dublin leg means I, and others I suspect, will be priced out of being able to attend.

I do think it"s a great idea in principle, just seems it would have maybe been better incorporated into one of the British legs (although appreciate there may be logistical reasons why that couldn"t happen).

The PLO leg could definitely have been held at one of our other destinations, we just felt that a fundamental change had to be made to the Irish leg to give it a chance.  No guarantees we haven"t got this wrong, but I do think it"s something we have to try - and of course whatever we do in S9 will be based on player feedback and our learnings in S8.

On the cost side of things...in my experience I"ve often found it cheaper to travel to the Irish leg than others in the North East and Scotland for example.  Hopefully six months gives a good period of time for anyone interested to plan their trip.

[Des]

Any Sunday games? are we going to mix it up, 6-max, shoot out, Stud?    

That detail will follow Wayne, but I know Tom is planning weekends with lots of options where possible.

[Scousebill]

About the Irish leg....

You don"t get anywhere unless you have an attempt....
A two day PLO event is certainly trying something different....

Well done for being ambitious and let"s hope it is a success....

[Des]

what to visit to Europe this year. welsh championships in england and the irish is plo. have to check shifts and will attend when off work but deffo not playing plo in ireland. thing this is a huge mistake. lucky if it gets 40 runners. would have gone subject to work had it been holdem. wcoap in london again. well guess they earned it ginven how hard their staff worked whist we were there. deffo dont agree with a national championship been played in outside the nation whos championship it is meant to be.

We are pretty confident we will be announcing a European leg (and a European website) in the next few weeks.  We"ve kept it separate to this announcement.

Dublin I"ve talked about in the last couple of posts.

Holding the Welsh in Bristol was far from being an easy decision.  This has been proposed to me several times in the past and I"ve always rejected it for the same reason you say, James.  However, when Tom put it on the table again, even for me it was a no brainer this year.  There isn"t a venue in Wales that can give APAT what it needs.  That feedback has come universally from our members, including our Welsh members, and it"s what we"ve found in seven years of going there.  

I had an email first thing this morning from the Gaming Manager at the G Casino in Cardiff and they are disappointed that we"re going to Bristol.  They put on a great event for us last year and were very supportive.  But there wasn"t sufficient space to meet our needs.   In that circumstance, practicality has to take over.

[Des]

I have to say that I"m very happy with most of the chosen venues, especially Manchester  but what happened to DTD ? Did they not want us this time or was it an APAT decision not to go there ?

DTD have been great partners and supporters of APAT over many years and they are a venue that we would always want on our annual schedule.  We discussed a potential event with them for S8 but they weren"t able to accomodate you guys on this occasion.

[Des]

is it safe to assume the home nations and euro team games will be played on thurs and fri prior to main events or have they been dropped.

gone through my shift pattern up to end of jan.

welsh off and playing
eng  working not playing
uk off thurs working fri sat and sund. not playing main event. will swap a shift if team game on and picked for scot.
uk team game off but unlikely to play
ire off but not playing.

On the international team front, we"re going to focus on the World Amateur Team Championship this year.  We"ve removed the Home Internationals and the European Amateur Team Championship from the schedule.

[DodgyEnd (Tom APAT.be)]

Very nice to have the WCOAP back in London! Was a great venue and for us (the Belgians) it"s easy to get to.
So we"ll definitely be back. And only having the team event there, makes it more prestigious I think.

Hoping to go to at least 1 other venue as well...

[Curlarge]

With regards to Dublin the costs available now are:-

Flight from Heathrow to Dublin with British Airways out Friday Jan 9th back Monday Jan 12th = £90 (less £30 if you have 4500 avios pts)

Bewleys Hotel Dublin Airport (tournament venue) £52.00 per night for a double or twin room (incl wifi but ex brekkie).

So for me £216.00, which is almost what I paid for the hotel alone last year.