APAT Season 5: Discussion

[duke3016]

Purely hypothetically, how many of you who play the National Championships regularly would take a Friday off work to play a Day1a, with a Day1b on a Saturday?

I bet not too many. Bear in mind we"d need enough runners on a Friday to make it worthwhile, events would cost more to put on, staff expenses would be higher, day 1a players getting to day 2 would have a spare day in between.....

If you think we"d not get runners on a day1a then we"re restricted, DTD apart, by casino capacity for UK national venues.

I could play Fridays.

Usually book the Friday off anyway to "prepare"  

[Paulie_D]

Usually book the Friday off anyway to "prepare"  

Ditto...but it"s a "travelling/drinking" day (not in that order)...I wouldn"t want to play an APAT event on a Friday.

Then again, if I donk out Friday, I have the whole weekend to get spannered.

Hmmm....decisions, decisions.

[Jon MW]

Usually book the Friday off anyway to "prepare"  

Ditto...but it"s a "travelling/drinking" day (not in that order)...I wouldn"t want to play an APAT event on a Friday.

Then again, if I donk out Friday, I have the whole weekend to get spannered.

Hmmm....decisions, decisions.

Distance and public transport mean I usually have to book Friday off work for travel to play on Saturday, for a day 1a on Friday I"d have to book Thursday as well. A lot of people travelling by train over any distance would be in the same boat - i.e. a couple of days (Friday and Monday) is ok for playing APAT, but 3 days is going to be pushing it for most in that situation.

[AAroddersAA]

Usually book the Friday off anyway to "prepare"  

Ditto...but it"s a "travelling/drinking" day (not in that order)...I wouldn"t want to play an APAT event on a Friday.

Then again, if I donk out Friday, I have the whole weekend to get spannered.

Hmmm....decisions, decisions.

Distance and public transport mean I usually have to book Friday off work for travel to play on Saturday, for a day 1a on Friday I"d have to book Thursday as well. A lot of people travelling by train over any distance would be in the same boat - i.e. a couple of days (Friday and Monday) is ok for playing APAT, but 3 days is going to be pushing it for most in that situation.

Also a problem for some tournaments. Dublin, Scotland and all the Euro events add up to quite a few extra days off work. I like having Friday as Paulie puts it as a day for travelling/drinking. It"s part of the weekend at some events. It would be great to extend the weekends a day of course but real life commitments might make it difficult in some cases.

[bigalhx3]

Purely hypothetically, how many of you who play the National Championships regularly would take a Friday off work to play a Day1a, with a Day1b on a Saturday?

I bet not too many. Bear in mind we"d need enough runners on a Friday to make it worthwhile, events would cost more to put on, staff expenses would be higher, day 1a players getting to day 2 would have a spare day in between.....

If you think we"d not get runners on a day1a then we"re restricted, DTD apart, by casino capacity for UK national venues.

i would not want to be paying for 2 or 3 nights hotel for a £75 comp and with the extra day off work and hotel and the £75 comp you are then getting up to £330 and thats the cost off the DTD Deepstack with 100k pot

[HaworthBantam]

Usually book the Friday off anyway to "prepare"  

Ditto...but it"s a "travelling/drinking" day (not in that order)...I wouldn"t want to play an APAT event on a Friday.

Then again, if I donk out Friday, I have the whole weekend to get spannered.

Hmmm....decisions, decisions.

Distance and public transport mean I usually have to book Friday off work for travel to play on Saturday, for a day 1a on Friday I"d have to book Thursday as well. A lot of people travelling by train over any distance would be in the same boat - i.e. a couple of days (Friday and Monday) is ok for playing APAT, but 3 days is going to be pushing it for most in that situation.

Also a problem for some tournaments. Dublin, Scotland and all the Euro events add up to quite a few extra days off work. I like having Friday as Paulie puts it as a day for travelling/drinking. It"s part of the weekend at some events. It would be great to extend the weekends a day of course but real life commitments might make it difficult in some cases.

+1, except for the drinking bit...

[technolog]

I"ve finally been able to find the time to get some thoughts down. They"re not particularly well thought out so please excuse me if the odd stupid idea has slipped through

I"ve also split my post into sections in an effort to avoid the dreaded tl; dr.

[technolog]

Online team league:

First of all let me say I really enjoy this! I can see why people think it needs altering and possibly it could be improved. However I do think that there is no reason why every team can"t get much bigger numbers. All it needs is someone who"s enthusiastic (a kind way of saying "sad" obv ) & computer literate enough to do the recruiting. In these days of social networking, it really ain"t that difficult, however "small" your catchment area is.

Surely every team could find one person to act as a recruitment officer? I"m sure the successful recruiters would be willing to pass on the "tips & tricks" to teams not in there division.

All it needs is one person who is willing to put in a couple of hours a week to get the numbers up. After all it repays Betfair"s generosity in their added value the more people we can get playing on there.

Perhaps we could even have volunteers from outside the area to act as recruiters for currently playerless teams to get them off the ground? I"d be willing to take on another team until someone from the area could take over. I"m sure others would too.

If changes are deemed necessary then I"d go for teams within teams so to speak, i.e. A, B, C teams etc decided by current team rankings. Then have an "area" championship, a team championship and an individual championship all within the one Sunday tourney.

[technolog]

Online championships:

These are great, no problem at all. I"d like to see them complemented by an individual league with a game every week at around the $10 buy-in level. Like the Premier League to the $50 game"s FA Cup. We could have promotion & relegation too, that"d really add to the interest.

Something else on my wish list (it"s quite a long document ) would be to see "leaderboard" style rankings. i.e. people can grind away on Betfair in either cash, STTs or MTTs and get ranked by ROI. It"d need splitting up into different buy-in categories to stop bigger buy-in binks having a disproportionate effect on your ranking. Would Betfair"s systems be able to do this?

[technolog]

Overseas events:

I love these and would attend them all if I had more money/holidays. However they do price out a significant number of people.

I think I understand APAT's intentions in creating these foreign events but I think it needs to be done in tandem with the (seemingly forgotten, definitely deferred) Association aspect of APAT. Perhaps we should be creating/nurturing/fostering links with existing Amateur poker tours in foreign locales, i.e. we return to British Isles-only (carefully worded to include Ireland!) and similar standalone overseas tours are created.

I"m all for social weekends away but I think they do diminish the rankings a little as not everyone can go or even wants to go.

[technolog]

Venues:

Of the current season, Coventry was my favourite. DTD is the best place to play poker but as it"s only up the road from me I feel compelled to travel and lose some of the "social" aspect! I enjoyed The International at Aberdeen, shame it"s closed.

A return to Aspers Newcastle would be good. I also like seeing new places too. Not that I ever see much apart from the casino!

It"d be good to move outside the confines of casinos too but I can"t see it happening anytime soon.

[technolog]

Live updates:

I think the live feed is a fantastic addition. I know it"s difficult but it"d be great to have it recorded (locally?) for later editing into a podcast or similar for a permanent record.

Greater integration with the update thread would be brilliant. Again I know it"s difficult and all costs money but could the updater be listening to the live feed to post the salient points onto the thread so that currently non-sensical comments can be seen in context?

Also be good to see the exits recorded somehow and used to compile more detailed rankings. I think I"ve seen a system where people can tweet and have it appear automatically on a forum. You could assign regulars (players) as twitter reporters.

[technolog]

Payout structure:

I"d like to see a traditional structure. Speaking as a nit, there"s no finer feeling than getting a few more £££ for folding . I"d also like to see everyone who"s back for day 2 already in the money & £75 alternate entries to be added to the main prize pool rather than giving them out as £75 "savers" to additional "winners".

Added value:

Betfair sponsorship has been very generous - thanks a lot and more of the same next season please!

Pro league:

The uptake has been disappointing. I think either one more go with a major overhaul or scrap it.

APAT Vegas:

Make it non-ranking, make it Nov "11 and let"s get 50 odd (very odd) out there for a week!

Sunglasses:

POTY by WarBwastardo!

[technolog]

Association:

I would love to see this get off the ground. Des is probably too busy now but surely APAT as a group is mature enough that we can get an elected executive committee. We"d need Des/tikay/tighty/Leigh as figureheads to try to enact decisions etc and they would probably need to have the power of veto. I think it"d be a shame if we were just to be a tour when we could be so much more.

Also I"d like to see the re-introduction of a nominal annual subscription to give members a degree of ownership. You could play without membership or perhaps just £5, but to have a vote, you"d need to pay a (larger) subscription. An annual £10 to £50 perhaps? The cash could help pay for a full-time employee possibly?

[Swinebag]

blatant post count abuse there Jack