A few observations/questions for the APAT online league organisers please, for your comment:
1) There are a few clubs that would appear to have no members in Division 3 and appear to have never had any members/had very few members ever.
Yes, this is the case. When we set up the 30 league clubs, we based it on regional areas with live venues. Not all of the clubs "live" poker demographic has transferred to an online response. We will review this at the end of the season, although to be fair, we"ve not been approached by anyone saying that they would like to setup a poker club in any other city.
2) Compared to the 2 divisions above we had about a third/quarter of their turnout.
This will always be the case. Success in the league is partly based on the volume of players a club has, although they need to be good players aswell. Therefore it is logical that the clubs higher up the league will attract more players. Although in saying that, last season, a number of the clubs in Division 3 were getting some of the higher turnouts in teh whole league.
3) I do not recall receiving any notification from APAT that the new league was upon us.
The new league was advertised in the newsletter that went out a few weeks ago to all members. All APAT facebook group members (over 1500) were invited to the new league. The forum was bombarded with club threads promoting the league. The online league has been advertised in numerous poker publications, and is discussed on numerous other poker forums.
4) How do APAT go about recruiting more players to the online national league?
We are already one of the most popular online leagues in the UK. We regularly get over 200 players on a Sunday night. We have a structure of Regional Controllers and club captains to promote and welcome new players to the league. We keep it cheap and fun to play, no registration fees for any of our games, over £5000 of added value seats available across the league each season.
I would just like to close by saying I am proactive myself in attracting Carlisle players and sent about 300 FB messages and have recruited all the players who played for us last night personally (4), despite not being captain and not having an active captain.
I want the club to do well and will continue to do what I can to increase numbers. I have even made suggestions to other clubs as to how they can attract players for their teams.
It"s with players like yourself that helps the league grow. We run this league mostly to offer a social, structured league to our members. We don"t force anyone to play it, but the regular numbers and feedback tell us that we are doing things right.
Keep up with the recruiting and you could be following Sunderland into Division 2 and bagging your team some APAT live seats along the way.
Leigh