The live events are stuctured just fine (except I appear to bubble too often).
My main comment regards the online team league. I speak as a very lapsed Capain of the Plymouth team who faired well in the first season (mantra, Quality not quantity) but always struggled to get enough players to ensure a prize/promotion - so much for the mantra. Soft play obviously came into the strategy (whatever the definition of soft play is). Due to this and the fact that Plymouth always struggled to garner enough support to match other more populated teams I rapdily became disillusioned about the format of the online league. That said, I would support a league of individuals. This would erradicate geographical factors and would reward the best players over a statistically significant period. I know this goes against the ethos of promoting luvvie duvvie comaradarie, but whoever said poker was anything other than a game of individuals prevailing over the rest of the losers. Hope this isnt too radical but I really do feel the online league, whilst in principle a good thing, does need a significant overhaul if it is to encourage new players from the outer reaches of the poker universe.
For interest, during 2010 I ran a league over 10 games (one per month) (average 7 - 8 runners) where the best 5 scores counted to the final placings. We deliberated long over how many games should count towards the final results. Too few and one risks the position of not encouraging support. Too many and one risks alienating new joiners earlier in the season than would otherwise be the case. In the end we paid the top three which bought them into a "local" (200 miles round trip) deep stack game. To maintain interest after the completion of the league (and to encourage support) , anyone who had played at least 5 games got a piece of the prize winners winnings in the deep stack tourney. Maybe if APAT did something similar we would get someone into a winning position in a major live tournament whilst not relying on geographical location and at the same time allow others to benefit from their success, thus promoting the "team/community" ethos and loyalty to the brand. Just some thoughts, interested to hear how others feel.
All the best,
Apologies for spelling and grammer mistakes but I am the other side of some whisky macs and my team went down to the Brummies today.
In spite of what I have said above, live games are the bedrock of APAT and we should never forget that. Tweaks to online formats are secondary to that.
Dave