Living in the wilds of the North Norfolk Coast, now that the harvest is over and the tractor"s put away for the winter, we now have very little to distract us away from the almost nightly ritual of Poker but with the current economic climate, numbers are dwindling, as I am sure that they are everywhere.
We do not want to lose our traditional local games but when times are tight, people cut back and the numbers over the night that we play have steadily dropped.
Our local nights are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with every other Friday night thrown in and when I started a couple of years ago now, the Tuesday night was very popular with upwards of 35 people playing on a regular basis.
Now unfortunately the Tuesday night fiver rebuy for an hour has twindled to around 16 but this is still up on what it was a few months ago.
The Wednesday night was previously £4 rebuys for 400 chips and often saw 16-20 players, now it is a 5/10 (pence) cash game and usually has between 6-8 players and the Thursday night game of £10 rebuys for 2,000 chips is now also reduced to a cash game of 12.5/25 pence (don"t ask!!!
) and again attracts very few players.
We also organise a Sunday Game every few months and held one the Sunday just gone, which attracted 23 players for a £25, 50,000 Chip Deepstack but this is well down on the first one we held, which attracted 36 players paying £50 for 20,000 chips.
Our player base is made up of mostly recreational bingo, sorry card players, with a few of us who have played APAT and a couple who have played GUKPT.
My concern is that if things keep going as they are, the local games will be lost and once that happens, may not come back.
My question to you fellow APAT"ers everywhere is what do you guys and girls play locally and what have you done to try and keep numbers up, when people have less cash to play with?
Any input would be greatly appreciated?