Hi all
Rest assured we spent a lot of the weekend considering the structure changes, observing etc
For starters it wasn"t possible to start earlier on day One. To be frank the venue itself had severe organisational problems and led to a tense couple of hours pre-event. This may not be the case at every venue, but its a big ask to start earlier in our experience.
At the end of Day One, we stop when players have been playing for 12 hours roughly. Thats a long day for APAT organisers as well as remaining players. This time round 5 mins longer per level plus 500-1000 plus too shallow antes all contributed to 47 coming back. So there is definitely scope to make a few alterations to those factors, rather than going on for longer on day one
Start of day two you typically run into casino staffing issues..dealers, front desk etc that prevents earlier starts
Switching to split dinner breaks is definitely under consideration though
The long break before the final yesterday was most undesirable, and will be triple checked next event to avoid if at all possible
So in summary a few tweakings maybe, but no great change to start/finish timings IMO
Onto time taken to make decisions. The relevant APAT rule has been mentioned, and I myself had to tell the likes of Brian and that table late on day one that you could not call a clock if you aren"t in a hand. It should be noted that the rule is framed like that because there is a tacit understanding that the DEALER will take the lead in calling for a clock if need be. I think though this is over-optimistic as dealers can be inexperienced or intimidated (and that Adam Wilkinson, Armitage, Martin table was lively and not for the faint hearted) and rarely call for a clock in my experience. I could not though go against an APAT rule mid comp, not matter how frustrated everyone was.
So we"ll look at that rule before Cardiff.