Before I offer my views I would like to stress that these are my opinions on the topic. My position within APAT doesn"t include any of these disciplinary issues, therefore I would hope I can give a balanced view on the subject.
I am also not going to comment on Steve"s personal situation as I do not think there is anything to be gained from this, other than to say that it is regrettably that APAT ever has to exclude individuals from their tournaments and this decision will not have been taken lightly.
As far as rules and regulations go and the disciplinary procedures, I think it is a real shame that this has become a problem this season.
However, player behaviour is a problem that nearly every poker tour has to deal with at some point and APAT is no different. When it comes down to it this is a matter of respect and unfortunately this seems to be a greater issue when alcohol is involvement, not always, but I don"t think it"s a coincidence.
When I say respect, I refer to a level of respect that should be shown to any other human being, in whatever circumstances. This covers a whole host of situations, but all of which are really common sense and shouldn"t need to be written in black and white.
In terms of a poker environment, each venue has a level of unacceptable behaviour that will result in action being taken by the staff or tournament director. When we turn up to play an APAT event at a venue, we do represent APAT as a whole whether you want to or not and the actions of a few can leave the venue with a negative viewpoint of everyone.
I don"t want this to happen and I believe it is the responsibility of every player to address these issues at the time and not allow them to escalate to a point where APAT needs to take disciplinary action.
There have been arguments made that table talk and aggression is part of players "game" and I am not disputing that at all having railed many APAT tournaments, but if all players considered how their actions impact on other players enjoyment of the games, then perhaps a sensible balance can be found.
An ideal scenario is that bad beats and cards aside, I want everyone to leave an APAT weekend feeling that they had a good time, both socially and pokerwise. Maybe that is asking too much due to the wide ranging characters that play, but it is because of the diversity of player that makes APAT what it is.
In every situation that has arisen this season, each individual was spoken to discreetly and politely about their behaviour by either the venue staff or one of the APAT team as soon as they were made aware of it. Nobody wants to see players excluded from tournaments or receiving table bans whilst they are still playing in a tournament and to the best of my knowledge, APAT have ensured players see out their tournament.
However, in my opinion, those players that do not take on board the polite requests of venue staff and the APAT team only have themselves to blame and action has to be taken.
I would stress that I have seen both sides of this during the season, as a number of players when asked to "tone it down" a bit, did so without any bother whatsoever and without any impact on anyone"s enjoyment of the weekend, including their own.
We, as a poker community, just need to appreciate how diverse we are and that everyone who plays APAT events is different. We have different expectations of the weekend, different poker styles, different motivations for being there, different personalities and somehow as players we need to ensure that everyone leaves wanting to play again and having enjoyed the experience.
That can"t be too difficult, can it ?
