If it's travel and accommodation that drives us then maybe we should have all the events in the cheapest place...Blackpool?!
On a more serious matter I'm against the change to increased buy in. A lot of the regs can afford this raise but it's always been a selling point for recs that APAT offers the best structured 2 day comp for less than a hundred quid. Plus if the buy in for main events is £110, what's the ME buy in for WCOAP, £150?
I'm heading out now so will come back and post more on this later.
Why does the main event at the WCOAP have to be different? we already have a £220 buy-in
The equivalent to £75 in 2005 would be £109 today so it be wont be an increase as such just keeping up with inflation
Erm...because it's marketed as the Main Event. Just like the WSOP Main Event is more expensive than their Circuit events which run year round.
The Championship events are £75 and the side events are ~£35/40 depending on which season it is. The WCOAP is £110 and the side events are £55, just like the WSOP where they have a range of buyins for the side events but the World Championship events are $10k, but at their Circuit events (ring, not bracelet for the winner), generally the sides are $365 and the main is $1,675.
Obviously APAT don't use the same ratio for the buy in difference here but you could make a decent comparison towards the APAT Championship events being like the WSOP Circuit events, and the WCOAP being like the WSOP.
However, my main argument against it is quite simple, if we go up to £100 + rake, we're then competing with the likes of the Goliath/DTD etc. Never going to win that battle at all. Also, for recreational players who play local comps down the Genting/G, it's not that much of a jump up from £56 to £82.50, but if they go home and tell their partner that the APAT comp is now OVER a hundred quid...that three figure number is still a big hurdle in recreational poker.
To be honest I think APAT's lost a bit of what it was about. It's become a lot more serious than it was and a lot of recs who play 20 quid buy in's down the pub/in the casino play one APAT, find the standard too high and give up. It's a victim of it's own success, in a way. All the guys who played 10 years ago are still here, and most of them are a lot better now than they were back then, but are quite comfortable to stay at this level. The only spot on the calendar I find is like it was is the Forum Team Event, and that's because everyone approaches the weekend differently.
I'm really not explaining myself very well here, but I'll try and get up to Manchester over the week and grab a drink with anyone who wants to discuss!