Dear Des, wtf is going on

[Des]

The Fitz were extremely challenging to work with and I have to say it"s unlikely we would go back again.  Given the numbers that we have always previously got in Dublin I"m surprised that we didn"t have a larger contingent over, which ultimately is why Mark was there on his own. I was due to travel also, but the numbers didn"t suggest it was going to be a two person update. 

Personally I think it"s critical to keep Ireland in the mix, but next year we will have to manage it differently.  Firstly we need a better venue and the Emporium is the obvious choice (they couldn"t do our dates this year).  Secondly we need to partner with an Irish promoter to ensure the event has a big Irish contingent playing.  We"ve already had a topline discussion with Stephen Mclean about this.  Some of our events have a strategic purpose (Las Vegas for example) while others should always be core - and that includes Ireland for me.

As one of the very few that travelled, I have to say I really enjoyed playing at the Fitz. I really liked it last time too.
Their free food and drink is bang on and something missed these days. I"d rather have a 20 min break with food on tap than a 1 hour break where I wait 45 minutes for an order to turn up and then have to scoff it at the table or worse run somewhere else. Dealers were excellent, knowledgeable and fun people. I"d say the lack of 1 dealer at the start is probably them having more of a clue about how many would turn up than we did. I"d be sad to go elsewhere. But wherever we go, if no effort is put in to promote the event then no-one will turn up. How hard can it be to send them a few flyers to stick on their wall and make sure there is a banner or two in their reception?
Plus a tad more promotion to the faithful over here wouldn"t go amiss.
Sorry but even re-reading your response tells me there were more issues on the APAT side than with the Fitz. At least on the face of it.

Given the numbers that we have always previously got in Dublin I"m surprised that we didn"t have a larger contingent over

Really? It wasn"t a surprise to me.

We"ve never had to issue posters to venues previously, but that is something we"ll consider for the future.

[Des]

Would just like to throw my opinion into the ring for what it is worth.......

Have always found Brendan to talk nothing but sense and I think he is more or less on the mark with his comments here.
Des responds by saying that APAT has to move forward and I also respect that view too.

But......

IMO APAT is now totally alien to what it used to be.

When it began it was an affordable British tour and over 3 or 4 seasons we saw regular players playing most if not all the events.
When the BCPC was founded in 2008 our core players were almost all APATers and those who were not were encouraged to play also. We went en-masse to Dublin, Cardiff and Edinburgh and supported each other for those weekends and had some great times and happy memories.
 There was the rankings to aim for. You WANTED to play every event and were gutted if you missed one.

Now, sadly, all that has gone. There is no real point to playing every event unless you have a job/ bank balance/ family that will allow travel to Prague, Vegas, etc.....
  I am afraid that while it is good to meet up with familiar friendly faces on the APAT weekends still, it will never be the same now.
 APAT has a global vision and that is fine. It just means isn"t what it used to be and in my opinion (and I don"t think I am alone in this one) that is a great pity.
  The loss of Tighty & Leigh is sad. Mark"s decision to quit was also a shocker on my return from holiday.  These are respected, experienced and knowledgeable people in the amateur poker community.  Why are they all leaving?
 I will still look forward to playing APAT events and support APAT through the BCPC where possible but, sadly, I feel it is now a different animal and not a better one.
     
 

APAT is still a very affordable tour to play Brian.  The buy in"s have not changed significantly since S1 and an entry can normally be had for under £100, before costs.  That said, I think the percentage of players who can afford to play all of the events in a season is very small.  I also think the majority of our members don"t play to win the Rankings, but for the poker and social side of each individual weekend. 

I think the availability of the type of event that we offer is what"s changed the most over the past few years.  The Sky tour (which I also started, bringing Tighty in to manage), Genting and DTD in particular have brought a huge array of great structured, low buy in events and that"s a great thing for players, but as I"ve said elsewhere it"s made for a completely different market today.

We need to continue to evolve what we do and it might be that S8 needs to see a greater focus on festival type weekends, along the lines of the WCOAP.  Time, and what you guys think will determine that.

[Des]

John makes some excellent points here. Let"s be fair, you cannot honestly say that the product offered by APAT is not still good. I will be doing Vegas and Prague which I am looking forward too immensely. The atmosphere generated at these events remains great and the community remain some of the best people in the world that will support APAT as they try to break new ground in the poker world. The weekends are becoming more like mini festivals which is great and event though I have not had a great chance to play it yet, the cash tour is a great idea and one I would love to see developed. APAT only cash tables are also a great idea and I hope it takes off, hopefully they will be a success in Scotland.

It is true things have to change, which is not a bad thing. There are a few things that APAT could address though to make the current product event better:-

When Tighty and Leigh were on the forum questions always got answered, even if they were not able to give an answer straight away you were kept up to date with what was happening. Can I draw attention to this thread as an example. The questions about the National Online League and the APAT rep travelling to Vegas have been out on the forum for a while but there is no answer to them. With the event in Vegas being in less than three weeks time I would hope that the answer to this is therefore

http://www.apat.com/forum/index.php?topic=13889.225

Something that might seem silly to some people as well is the live updates. They use to give you a real sense of being there if you missed an event or you could read through the live updates and really enjoy them when you returned from the event. It is something I used to really enjoy doing. Over the last few events the live updates seem to have been missing that.

Overall I am very happy with the APAT product and understand that people like Tighty, Leigh and Mark will sometimes have to move on and as an onlooker APAT certainly seem to have a strong team in place. Look forward to attending the rest of the events this year which are going to be awesome and I am sure Season 8 will be highly anticipated.

Your point about questions being answered is a very good one Steve.  Sometimes the answers aren"t necessarily there, but responses should be added more consistently.  We need to staff up a little bit and that"s something I"m looking at.

Live updates is something that Leigh and I had continually discussed over the past year in particular.  I agree that what"s happening at the moment isn"t ideal and that we need to address it.  Whether the answer is a return to streaming, a mobile app or too push more resource at it is open to discussion, but we know something needs to change.

[CW86]

Nothing stays the same for ever. No-one stays in their job for ever. It is to be expected that some people associated with APAT will move on to other things.

When I started playing APAT, there was one tournament for the weekend. Day 1 would be great, but on Day 2 the casino would be like a ghost town, with just the three tables or so who were left, some APAT management and maybe a half a dozen watchers. Frankly, it was depressing.

Then Day 2 tournaments were introduced and the whole feeling changed. Some people played them, others stayed around and Day 2 became fun.

More recently, the Cash Tour has been introduced on Friday night.

It has now been improved further. The best-prepared briefing document I have ever seen shows that, in Glasgow, there will be:

Friday:
Cash Tour Qualifier

Saturday:
Main Event
Cash Tour Qualifier

Sunday:
Cash Tour Final
Main Event Day 2
Pub Poker tournament (okay, not really for us)
PLO tournament
Dedicated APAT-only cash tables

A full weekend of poker, non-stop from Friday night til Sunday night if anyone wants to play that much. In short, the best offering APAT has ever made outside of the WCOAP/ECOAP. It is a dramatic contrast with the weekends of a couple of years ago.

The following week, APAT will be holding a tournament in Las Vegas for the second time, followed shortly after by a tournament in Prague. I don"t know how they have done it, but they have managed to attach APAT to the WPT event.

There are still plenty of APAT events in the UK. A few months ago, they gave us the opportunity to play at Wembley, the only players outside the ISPT to get that chance.

There was a super online team league that went on for a few months earlier in the year and another one is promised.

WTF is going on Des?

Very well said John.

[BOINGBLITZ]

Appreciate the replies guys and what John and Steve say along the lines of "mini-festivals" is a good thing IMO.