Firstly just want to say a massive thank you to Des & Tom for organising a fantastic 10 days and letting me personally hang out with a great bunch of lads (Gotham) and meet all the great people who attend Apats....Don Roberts, Ian Thompson, Simon "Snoopy" Lawler, Carl Pilgrim, many of the Italians, Steffan and Alexander (two german lads i met)...the list is endless!
Apat might just be rediscovering a usp with the offer of all these mixed games which as we saw where a missive hit (I"m certainly a convert)
Also a big thanks to Dann & Paulie for the great updates
Finally Tom think we managed 19 in the end....22.5 for just the two/four
of us was just too high a line. Hopefully next year though
Ironically its the huge blinds which are making it such a tight slow affair...
What"s the alternative? Slower blind levels deeper into day 2 and have a day 3 for the final table?
Re the structure Tom, off the top of my head you could
-Revert back to 45 minute levels
-Play an additional level on day 1 (if you were to add 5 mins a level, you would already have an additional hour of play day 1)
-Pause the clock on Hand for Hand!
-Flatten structure in later stages to avoid a few blind increase choke points
Whilst all this might seem like it would make the tournament longer, people could at least play post flop and allow hands to develop (thus increasing the likelihood of elimination)
You could also consider playing the main event final day on the Sunday so that if a late finish was to occur it would only be dragging into bank holiday Monday...
Thinking about what you said Tom...actually i really like your idea of having the final on Monday afternoon
Day 1A - Friday
Day 1B - Saturday
Day 2 - Sunday
Day 3 - Monday
I realise it is nuts to run a 3 day comp for a £10 fee*... but this is unique (this is apats showpiece and i strongly believe everything that can be done to prevent what is currently happening needs to be considered). Also, the amendments would require less dealers anyway and we would still be running other comps on the Monday anyway.
*I would certainly be happy to pay £100 + £15 for these improvements...
And from all accounts Aspers love having us there