Q: When is a country not a country ?And the answer is........
When it"s a region.
This, however, is not the real question that has kicked off a debate in the last 24 hours on the forum.
There has been a lot of conflicting posts regarding the launch of the new National Online League. A lot of accusations of players being negative about the announcement, petty squabbles and cliques.
This isn"t good for anyone, especially any potential sponsors who may be reading from the shadows to see what they might be getting for their money. Rather than post on those threads, I thought I would move my thoughts to this blog, which to be honest is never going to get read by anyone who matters in the poker industry.
From what I can see, no one has posted anything negative about APAT, Pokerstars or the hard work and planning that goes into making this work. There have been discussions around a few areas :-
- The new rule of enforcing the team you play for to match your location
- The potential finishing time, which will be driven by the start time, structure and number of runners
Both of those points above have the potential to reduce the number of games in the 15 week series that some players will choose or be able to play. Therefore, any discussion around improving what is already a great looking league to enable more players to play more of the games can only be a good thing.
It is a case of trying to please all of the people all of the time and that is something that got me constantly into a spin during my time with APAT, because although the old saying states that this is not possible, trust me, it is something that everyone involved with APAT really does try to achieve. And that can"t be said of many organisations.
Unfortunately as with any discussion, everyone piles in. Many often are unaffected by the decisions, yet they will add fuel to any potential fires. That"s just the world that we live in, but people need to see through that and see what is really being discussed.
It"s not about Nationalism or trying to build a super team. Nor is it about finding an angle to improve your chances of the added value, it"s about wanting to maximise the opportunity for as many people to play for the team that they want to, with a structure that means they are not worried about getting up for work the following morning, which means that they want to come back and play again the following week, and then the week after that , and then the week after that.
This is what will benefit the players the most. Lots of players playing means Pokerstars are happy, which means APAT can look to get an even better deal for the next league. Surely that benefits everyone.
On a final point, having been involved in running these league for two years, along with organising a number of smaller mini leagues in my spare time during the off season, I like to think that I have a small idea as to what makes a good team.
In no particular order, a team will be successful if it has a proactive captain who messages players, responds to players, sets up a facebook group, promotes the games. Behind this, you need a core of players that support the captain by playing most weeks and contributing to the promoting and recruiting of players. Numbers are important to a certain extent in this type of league, but just being in the largest geographical region doesn"t mean a thing if you sit back and just expect people to play.
The only negative comments I have read over the past day have been the queue of people looking to "shout down" those trying to have a discussion. This is not what APAT is about, but if you really feel the need to flame away, why not do it on this blog instead of the League threads or Facebook, and maybe we can have a sensible discussion about it.
