National Online League - Season 6 Formats

[AceOnTheRiver]

Given the options, which makes it more likely that you will participate all year and will ensure that the league is competitive for as long as possible?..that"s question 1

Questions 2...does belonging to a team with regional/local identity  matter to you? Is it time to move on from that and form teams in different ways?

1. I will participate in as many games as I can irrespective of the final decision
2. It"s not the regional aspect that matters to me, it"s the established group of Luton players who have become a community which matters to me (very specifically me, taking your question literally) but as per my earlier post I have no doubt my views would be different if I played for a smaller club. So for me re part two of the question, selfishly "no", selflessly "maybe".

[AceOnTheRiver]

We got numbers cos we went out and recruited you just carried on with walsall ,birmingham with odd player from natural discovery. And also you got well established players in APAT all capable of scoring poins and also when required to play every week . We get newbies to APAT and a lot new to poker.

I echo most of Scouse"s point from a Luton perspective. Recruitment has been part of the game and our skipper has been brilliant at it plus the fact that Rich Baker bought a lot of his mates in and our German friend Achim chose to join Luton and recruited some compatriots

"newbies to APAT and a lot new to Poker" - never really thought about that but it"s spot on.

West Mids had the quality and that shone through in the end, but wasn"t a team with loads of newbies pushing you at the end exactly what the APAT spirit should be about?

[Des]

This proposed reshuffle will undoubtedly address the current inequity in the team sizes and bravo Apat for their considerable efforts. My fear is that the potential for the league to be a recruitment competition remains entact.

Now that may be beneficial for Apat and would certainly be a nice benefit to any potential sponsor but, I suspect that if a couple of diligent captains actively and successfully recruit a decent number of players we will ultimately find ourselves back in the same inequitable hole.

In that environment the Captain"s role may again become crucial and overly burdensome and it"s highly likely we will see a repeat of this seasons mass resignations.

I"d be very happy for captains to lose this responsibility.  Personally I"d rather have a lot of happier captains and players telling their friends that the League is competitive and good fun, than desperately trying to recruit for their teams.  In option 2 the players would be allocated to teams as evenly as possible and I"d rather see a league that works first and foremost, rather than one that is growing, but unhappily.

[Chipaccrual]

If it helps, I"m pondering pushing APAT much more in Dorset, Devon, Cornwall now that I have moved a bit further West.

"I"m pondering pushing APAT". Does that mean your back? Yay!

Right, where"s our advent calendar.

Pondering depends on a lot of things.  

No time for an advent calendar, but have you tried Chipaccrual"s Big Christmas End of Year Quiz ?

[RicayBoy]

The regionalised teams scenario (Option 1) is the only viable alternative for me.

It means that those who have worked hard to get a good team ethos will not see that hard work destroyed and the smaller groups will still be together albeit as part of bigger teams. I imagine that APAT would be able to find out the average number of runners from each club last season, so should reasonably easily be able to ensure that the new teams are of similar numerical size. It would also make sense if APAT looked to run a live event in each "region" so everyone gets a "home" game.

A "team" comprised of 15 people randomly assembled from all over the country is not a team for me it"s just a group of individuals put together - It"s like something off the X-factor. Surely the individual should choose whether he wants to play for a certain team or not - not just allocated into Pot C at the whim of someone else - Not for me thank you.

I do think with only one division, there is some scope to alter the team/individual dynamic with regards any possible added value. For example the top three points scorers from the winning team get added value seats and the top three individuals (excluding the top three individuals from the winning team) also get added value seats. This means if a similar scoring system is used as last year, individuals will nearly always have a reason to turn up, even if their team is doing badly.

I also think we need to remember the key point of APAT to recruit more players would be better served by the regional format.

[PantsMan]

Definitely stick with regions for me.

Don"t understand the need to start with a "level playing field". Why? We don"t get to the end of the football premiership each season and start reforming all the teams so that next season it"s all lovely and nice and fair for everyone. Some teams are better than others, that"s just the way it is and those are the teams to beat.

Walsall were the team to beat, now it"s West Mids. The main reason for this is as Scouse said "you got well established players in APAT all capable of scoring poins and also when required to play every week ." The fact is, those players come from the West Midlands. Therefore West Mids has the strongest team, it"s not rocket science. If it were just down to numbers then Luton would have stormed it. It"s not, it"s about the team with the best players. Which is as it should be.

I first discovered APAT through joining the Walsall team then through that joining the BCPC and moving on to playing in the live tourneys. Through that i"ve met a lot of friends who are in my team, others in the BCPC and even more in APAT. None of that would have happened if i"d simply been allocated to some team of randoms who could be from anywhere in the country. I"d certainly lose interest if it went down that route and I suddenly found myself in team Random 7.

Oh and keep the scoring system, it"s spot on.

I think that it"s easier to state that Andy, if you"re in the best team in the League.  

Ultimately APAT will be guided by the players as to which format to go with in Season 6; but we do have a responsibility to ensure the format works for as many players as possible.

Maybe it is but if I were in one of the other teams i"d be doing my damndest to try and beat the teams at the top. And i"d be trying to recruit better players so we could do just that. It"s been close the last 2 seasons at the top and although we"ve won it could very easily have gone otherwise.

I understand the need to make it work for as many as possible, i just don"t feel that teams of randoms is the way forward.

[PantsMan]

If it helps, I"m pondering pushing APAT much more in Dorset, Devon, Cornwall now that I have moved a bit further West.

"I"m pondering pushing APAT". Does that mean your back? Yay!

Right, where"s our advent calendar.

Pondering depends on a lot of things.  

No time for an advent calendar, but have you tried Chipaccrual"s Big Christmas End of Year Quiz ?

Tried it, failed miserably! Will certainly give it a go at some point though.

[Fatcatstu]

Pondering depends on a lot of things.  

No it doesnt, stop mincing about and get back involved please and thanks :p

[mporter123]

The regionalised teams scenario (Option 1) is the only viable alternative for me.

A "team" comprised of 15 people randomly assembled from all over the country is not a team for me it"s just a group of individuals put together - It"s like something off the X-factor.

To be fair, Little Mix and One Direction were put together. Shows what a team of individuals can become...

[Fatcatstu]

I don"t think that poker is such a skill fest that the odd player who may be a "7" in knowledge and ability terms, is likely to get far greater results over a 10 match season than a player who is a "3" for example.  I think it is right to separate them as best we can with the understanding that anomoly placements will happen. 

So, as far as new players are concerned, there will be an element of "luck of the draw".  But they would be allocated to the next team in the rotation, who may have had a player less than some of their competitors to that point. 

Ultimately, in the seeded/draft scenario we are unlikely to have super teams and that is the primary objective of that approach. 

In addition, reducing the number of overall teams concerns me a bit; not to mention how new players might perceive a league that contains such apparently disparate teams as Ireland and West Midlands for example. 

My concern is as Steve and Waz mentioned earlier, what happens if teams lose that local feel?  I think their two teams and one or two others contained players with a lot of passion for the game, but very few of the other League teams did.  Most of our community interaction occurs at the live events, so players know each other across quite a wide geographical spread.  I"m tempted to think that passionate players would be equally passionate no matter which team they play for; particularly if the team they represent has a shot at winning points on each and every matchday.

agree with all of this. well put Des.

[PHIL_TC]

Really torn on all this, whatever happens I"ll play as many as I can regardless.

If we go down the random route I think this will lose the "my local team" feel which is a real shame, especially to the teams the like of Luton and others who have grown together and are a real community. I know for Stockton as well we"d all be gutted to lose the sense of all playing together, even though we knew really we didn"t have the depth to contend.

However reading some of the comments on here and elsewhere maybe the sniping between teams and players would be completely eliminated if we lost the local / regional aspect. A complete scrapping and creation of a new team structure,  even if they are initially randoms could generate new friendships and comradery and put a stop to the problems of region vs region which will always create conflicts. Something I"d definitely like to see the back of x

[Waz1892]

Waz it sounds to me with option 2 you would have a Luton club, but possibly only a Luton captain with the rest of the team being made up from all over the country?

No change then?  (although you forgot to mention rest of Europe too)

Average of 34miles from luton! Not that bad!  

Mike, yes sorry it seems I mis-read the opening post. Whatever option that maintains as much of individual clubs has my vote.

[fandango]

Am I not the only one who likes the way it"s run at the moment?.. I say keep it as it is  .

Proud member of team Luton.

Edit: Whatever is decided I will play every game I can. ( Every team just needs a Wazz as a captain with his recruiting skills there would be no problems )

[scouse3465]

Andy O you talk some rubbish , All teams done loads to recruit new players . West mids did very little !

You need to read some of the posts and think lad seriously .

West mids was formed with the champions Walsall and another div 1 team birmingham. We had number cos got a lot of new players to poker etc not established players for apat ! who can play a bit

[technolog]

We could try both formats on alternate Sundays. More games for the sponsors.