Season 6 Discussion

[Des]

It is likely that the opening weekend of season 6 will be either Feb 25th & 26th or Mar 31st & Apr 1st.  Discussions are  ongoing so don"t shoot us if things change please.  But I"m using the Feb dates for my planning purposes atm.

Can I make other plans for this weekend?  

What type of gun do you have there Andy?  

Water pistol. You"ll be fine mate

Short barrel?  

[Paulie_D]

It is likely that the opening weekend of season 6 will be either Feb 25th & 26th or Mar 31st & Apr 1st.  Discussions are  ongoing so don"t shoot us if things change please.  But I"m using the Feb dates for my planning purposes atm.

Can I make other plans for this weekend?  

What type of gun do you have there Andy?  

Water pistol. You"ll be fine mate

Short barrel?  

That fires blanks?  

[AJDUK]

It is likely that the opening weekend of season 6 will be either Feb 25th & 26th or Mar 31st & Apr 1st.  Discussions are  ongoing so don"t shoot us if things change please.  But I"m using the Feb dates for my planning purposes atm.

Can I make other plans for this weekend?  

What type of gun do you have there Andy?  

Water pistol. You"ll be fine mate

Short barrel?  

errrr  

[AVFC.WILSON]

It is likely that the opening weekend of season 6 will be either Feb 25th & 26th or Mar 31st & Apr 1st.  Discussions are  ongoing so don"t shoot us if things change please.  But I"m using the Feb dates for my planning purposes atm.

Can I make other plans for this weekend?  

I already have...
Doing A National Pool Plant Operators Certificate - Three day course designed for supervisors and managers who are responsible for the safe operation of swimming pools, providing the knowledge required to maintain pool plant and equipment. For staff wishing to progress within the industry, it also provides core knowledge, including pool water testing, the chemistry and treatment of pool water, and current best practices.

Exciting Stuff  

[Robert HM]

Reg Fees: Was I alone in being naive enough to believe that the venues didn"t charge as they knew there was money to be paid over at the bar, food and house games (DTD excepted). I didn"t realise that it was coming out of APAT's pocket. I still feel that the lack of reg fee was a great move forward and it would be a shame to lose this.

Schedule: Monthly can be a bit hectic, I could never have made that many. Every two months would make each comp more valuable.

Online/Live: I am not privy to the negotiatons obviously but feel the split of sponsors would be likely to cause problems. A major chain of venues would like APAT presence more if they were also playing on their online site as well. I think perhaps Stars have been lucky to cream the best part of the deal this time.

[Jon MW]

As APAT prepare to annouce further season six details towards the end of this week, there are still a few decisions that we have yet to finalise.  I"m going to share these with you as they are very important and your feedback could tip the balance one way or another.

1)  Registration Fee

Whether to add a registration fee is the single biggest decision facing APAT at the moment. 

APAT has paid the registration fee of every player who has played a live Championship event with us over the past five years and I said earlier in this thread, that"s something that I"m very proud of.  However, the poker market is going through a very challenging time right now.  There is also a wealth of live options available to poker budget holders, who can often acquire players more competitively through google search campaigns and signup offers. 

As the owner of the APAT budget, I found myself in the strange position last year of wanting to run smaller tournaments later in the season to ensure we were able to make our budget work as hard as we could.  This is a conflicting position, because in requiring smaller number tournaments, we end up not promoting the events to our membership as a whole and clearly that"s a viscious circle we need to get out of. 

The addition of a 10% registration fee - which would go in its entirity to the venue to cover their costs - would enable us to promote our events hard again, and I feel that it is essential that we get back in growth mode.

What do you guys think, because if we go ahead with a reg fee, ultimately it"s going to cost you money when you play?

2)  Scheduling

For the past two seasons in particular, APAT has run a National Live event every month.  In my opinion it"s too much. 

I think it must be challenging for so many of our members to be able to travel and play on a monthly basis and similarly it is difficult to effectively promote as there is too much going to between the live events, online championship events, online league, not to mention satellites and direct buy in events. 

My view is that we should go to a Festival style weekend once every two months.  That gives us more time to run satellites and promote the events hard.  Over the festival weekend, I can see us having the Online Championship event on the Thursday night, a member get together on the Friday night, the main event over Saturday and Sunday, a live event on Saturday night, a live event on Sunday afternoon and a one table Cash Tour event over the weekend also.

3)  Winners packages

We"ve offered live professional event entries to all of our winners for the past five years.  An idea that we are considering is to offer the winner of every live and online event this year a World Championship of Amateur Poker passport, offering the main event and three side event entries.  Although the value of this prize may be a little less than a Genting entry for example, it feels like a great idea to me to have every Amateur and Online Champion together at the WCOAP, where we can also add the Awards night, and create something really huge.  ...

I think points 1 and 2 go together well.

An increase in the cost of going to each APAT event with a decrease of how many APAT events there are to go to.

I don"t think it necessarily has to be slashed to every other month but if the total were anything between 6 and 9 it would work.

In a way I like the idea of the online tournament kicking off any festival weekend - but, like others I"m not sure a lot of people are going to want it on top of going away for the weekend. And I think the online tournaments are a nice way to fill in the gaps between the live tournaments anyway. So all in all I think they"d be better in the off months rather than at the festival weekends.

I don"t think the WCOAP passport should completely replace the added value big tournament entry - I think it would be a good addition to the range of added value prizes though.

[Gazza]

Reg fee: adding one seems fine to me. If the buy-in is still £75, seems better to make it £75+5 rather than £82.50. Simpler, and the players still get a little bit of value.

Schedule: six or eight events sounds about right. Like the idea of the mini festival as well.

Added value: The idea of UKIPT/GSP/GUKPT seats is far more appealing to me than a WCOAP passport, I think it"s a much better selling point to those unfamiliar with APAT as well. Plus the WCOAP passport really restricts winners to having to play the WCOAP.  How about a WCOAP main event seat and a GSP seat?

PS: like the idea of two visits to Dee Tee Dee, full schedule of side-events at both please.

[Waz1892]

Reg fee is fine if needed to be added. If this fee goes to the casino as a whole currently what would APAT do with the "extra" available funds out of the budget?

More/better advertising? Fine, but at the same time we are having/ looking to reduce the number if live events!? Yet seeking even more people.

Not suggestion that isn"t a good idea just stating thoughts.

Live events- understand the scene is getting crowded, but 6 events is very low.

Added value- prefer the step into a higher buyin tournament, I think still the majority play NL when playing live so added stud/Omaha, would feel, to, me "wasted".

Can"t wait though....

[AVFC.WILSON]

My thoughts on this:

Reg Fee - It"s all down to personal views and circumstances but the addition of a Reg Fee wouldn"t stop me playing at an APAT event. Reg Free may be APAT's USP but what is that USP achieving?

The Free Registration was APAT's USP (And it still is) But the product APAT promoted has flourished since it was established in 2006. APAT has a 20,000 strong memebership and with an added registration fee i can evision it as a start to a bright future for APAT and the tour moving onto bigger and better things in the near future.

I"m all for Reg Fee"s i see no problem with them if they were to appear in season 6. For the amateur events i could see £75+£5 working and then 10% for the events that cost £100+ for example the WCOAP and Pro-Am events?

[Delboy]

My views:


Reg fees:  No problem £7.50 still makes the events good value

Scheduling: I understand the need to have less than one an month, but would suggest that 6 a year is a little too few. Perhaps 1 every 6 weeks is doable?


Added value: My issue with this, is the restriction of when it can be used. At the announcement of each season, I know immediately which events I can and can"t attend. If the WCOAP was one of those I can"t, I have no added value to play for, so if I won an event .......

[AJDUK]

Reg Fee: Bang goes the USP! But was always inevitable. (Paulie already offered to pay my reg fees earlier in this thread so no issues with me  )
Scheduling: Depends on the schedule. Could be a long wait for some if you venture from the mainland too often.
Added Value: Anything is great. Just don"t tell Scouse Prefer non APAT events tbh. WCOAP seems a limited choice.

Don"t like the idea of online national on a Thursday night.

[HOLDorFOLD]

Reg fee = no problem

Scheduling = 6 fine if need be, but 8/9 would be preferable

Added Value = always a bonus, whatever it is.

[PHIL_TC]

Reg fee - Not a problem at £5 or 10% (and / or optional membership fee for APAT incentives)

Schedule - Every 6 weeks sounds perfect and would mean more beer money as APAT's generally fall just before pay day

Added Value - Would prefer UKIPT/GSP/GUKPT seat, but as it won"t affect me anyway will go with the flow

Festival - Do like the idea of online National for Thursday and making it a full weekend

[Des]

Reg fee is fine if needed to be added. If this fee goes to the casino as a whole currently what would APAT do with the "extra" available funds out of the budget?

More/better advertising? Fine, but at the same time we are having/ looking to reduce the number if live events!? Yet seeking even more people.

Not suggestion that isn"t a good idea just stating thoughts.

Live events- understand the scene is getting crowded, but 6 events is very low.

Added value- prefer the step into a higher buyin tournament, I think still the majority play NL when playing live so added stud/Omaha, would feel, to, me "wasted".

Can"t wait though....

We will go with a series of different partners in 2012 which will give us the freedom to amend the schedule as mentioned earlier in the thread.  The reg fee will essentially enable us to add more events, so I would see us increasing from 6 to 8 or 9 as seems to be the popular request at the moment.  

[Des]

Reg Fees: Was I alone in being naive enough to believe that the venues didn"t charge as they knew there was money to be paid over at the bar, food and house games (DTD excepted). I didn"t realise that it was coming out of APAT's pocket. I still feel that the lack of reg fee was a great move forward and it would be a shame to lose this.

Schedule: Monthly can be a bit hectic, I could never have made that many. Every two months would make each comp more valuable.

Online/Live: I am not privy to the negotiatons obviously but feel the split of sponsors would be likely to cause problems. A major chain of venues would like APAT presence more if they were also playing on their online site as well. I think perhaps Stars have been lucky to cream the best part of the deal this time.

You would think so with regards the casino chains, but unfortunately it isn"t as straight forward as it has been over the past few years - and of course it"s not too much of a challenge to set up your own tour and not risk losing your traffic to a third party like APAT. 

PokerStars on the other hand was a strategic target for APAT, and a very effective one at that.