S4 Online National League - Discussion

[Chipaccrual]

I don"t know if this has been mentioned sorry if it has but haven"t read through the whole thread!

Just had a quick butchers at the structure and it"s got 15 min blinds. Can you confirm whether or not they"re staying that way or going back to 13 mins?

Cheers.

Not going to change it for this week now, but will look at getting it back to 13 mins in future, depending on finsihing times.

[Lankylad]

I don"t know if this has been mentioned sorry if it has but haven"t read through the whole thread!

Just had a quick butchers at the structure and it"s got 15 min blinds. Can you confirm whether or not they"re staying that way or going back to 13 mins?

Cheers.

Not going to change it for this week now, but will look at getting it back to 13 mins in future, depending on finsihing times.

Shame really because I"m actually in favour of 15 mins blinds, although not many people seem to be. I played a few after it went up to 13 min blinds, and the endgame still became too much of an all in shove-fest for my liking. It"s a difficult one, you probably can"t have a really decent structure because of possible late finishing times, but the better the structure in a league format like this the more chance of the best really shining.

On the other hand an extra 2 minutes might not make a blind bit of difference, pardon the pun.

[AJDUK]

If we could just replicate the structure that existed on Blue Square that would be perfect. Put the levels back in that were removed and a 12 min clock would be fine. Or give us more chips to start with. As it is it"s far to shovey too early IMO.

[Lankylad]

If we could just replicate the structure that existed on Blue Square that would be perfect. Put the levels back in that were removed and a 12 min clock would be fine. Or give us more chips to start with. As it is it"s far to shovey too early IMO.

Aye, I hit on that point as well last season, and that"s probably a better solution tbh. If we had an Ultimate Bet or Full Tilt type blind structure (for example) you could easily have the blinds at 12 minutes, possibly even 10. The tournament shouldn"t finish any later and there"ll be more play in the endgame, as stack sizes will be decent in relativity to the blinds.

So I think the way the blinds rise (quite steeply) would be better being looked at rather than the length of the levels. As I said I don"t really expect it to be looked at but it"s just a shame there isn"t more play allowed near the end.

[RiverAsUsual]

Online team games

Lessening the advantage of the larger teams.

One thing that doesn"t seem to have been considered is dividing "the number of points won by a team" by "the number of members of that team who played that game" (or even a division of this latter number).

These following methods can be adjusted as necessary.

eg.1.  Team Hollywood comes 1st and 6th for lets say, 18 points and has a total of 11 players entered. Their score for that game is 18/11 = 1.64 (rounded up). Using larger points scale will be necessary for more realistic looking tables as people may underestimate the value of even a single league point difference.

eg.2. Divide the number of players entered by 3 (or whatever number seems best) always rounding up, before making a similar calculation as above. So 18 points would be divided by (11/3 = 3.66r, rounded up = 4) giving 18/4 = a score of 4.5. Again these scores can be increased by awarding a larger points scale.

The same methods using a larger number of participants eg 19 players would award (eg.1) 0.95 pts or (eg.2) 2.57 pts

Even then, these award figures can be multiplied by 10 for more realistic looking points tables.


Larger teams will still have the advantage of being more likely to have the opportunity to employ team tactics.

All that either of the above two methods does, is to better award points proportionally in relation to team numbers in any given game. In these circumstances people like myself will be more willing to turn out for a smaller team, knowing our lack of numbers is not now such a massive handicap as although smaller teams will win points less often, when they do, their awarded score will tend to be bigger.

[Foggy]

Must agree, on face value this seems a better option than the one we are using at the moment.

It is becoming difficult to motivate yourself with the larger teams saturating the  league.

[AJDUK]

I like this idea too. Especially since Solent would be even further behind Walsall by this method!

I can"t decide though whether this would act as a disincentive to sign up new "random" players once a team has reached an "average" size, because each new player would mean points gained being spread more thinly. Being too big could probably be a hindrance. And not signing up players is not what APAT is about (sorry for the double neg).

Interesting idea John.

[cincicrappykid]

Half of the Walsall team dont score any points any how so we can give them to Birmingham if they want to SATURATE THE LEAGUE , Quality not quantity is what Walsall is about...... i fank u

[ian.ski309]

Whilst I understand and agree with the objectives behind introducing new members to APAT... Division 2 has become a recruitment tournament rather than a poker tournament. Well, unless you play for one of the "big two" of course.

[TheSnapper]

Though I have championed the idea of change to the current format, that change has got to be even handed and cannot be overly penal on the bigger teams.

Its going to be difficult to sell to those who currently hold the numerical high ground and tbh their successes at recruitment are deserving of some reward. That said, I do think the value of numerical advantage in the teamplay dynamic (especially at the business end) is totally underestimated.

A prerequisite for any new format has to be to allow small teams to get at least some team points on the board, how can you decide relegation places when 50% of teams have Zero points!

Is there anyone who sincerely believes that a format that allows this crazy anomally can entice the lower place teams to continue to make up the numbers.

To achieve any meaningful change.....

• Team points absolutely have to be awarded beyond the top 3 scoring teams


• Awarding points to the top 4 teams based on division 2 scores to date effects a trivial change to the scoring


• IMHO, 3 scorers per team, team points for the top 5 placed teams is a minimum starting point for improved format

[Waz1892]

Firstly it is a shame that the bigger clubs are getting a little bad press over the numbers they do get.   I can only speak with our club (Luton) but we manage to get high numbers through good networking within our club, and some hard work put in at the start in recruiting (Maybe sometimes a little too eager! )  But my point is, we have done nothing different that other clubs could do?  

Anyhoooo...

The points player ratio is a good idea, but was mentioned before maybe distracts from APAT obtaining newer players, promoting its brand through the online league.

And, again as before, it could detract from clubs signing up new players.

So my 2p..

To have a squad of players in each club but have a maximum of XX per club actually playing the matchday.

A) Each club could have numerous members - making sure APAT grows

B) No club with smaller members are "punished" for a lack of numbers.

It could be up to the captain to select that weeks palyers, or could be done on a rotation basis..or APAT could enforce that all players must play at least 5 games...etc....

Just thoughts running through my head....and now putting it out there....i"m sure I havent thought of all angles and this certainly hasn"t been fully thought out yet!  

[TheSnapper]

Firstly it is a shame that the bigger clubs are getting a little bad press over the numbers they do get.   I can only speak with our club (Luton) but we manage to get high numbers through good networking within our club, and some hard work put in at the start in recruiting (Maybe sometimes a little too eager! )  But my point is, we have done nothing different that other clubs could do?  

Anyhoooo...

The points player ratio is a good idea, but was mentioned before maybe distracts from APAT obtaining newer players, promoting its brand through the online league.

And, again as before, it could detract from clubs signing up new players.

So my 2p..

To have a squad of players in each club but have a maximum of XX per club actually playing the matchday.

A) Each club could have numerous members - making sure APAT grows

B) No club with smaller members are "punished" for a lack of numbers.

It could be up to the captain to select that weeks palyers, or could be done on a rotation basis..or APAT could enforce that all players must play at least 5 games...etc....

Just thoughts running through my head....and now putting it out there....i"m sure I havent thought of all angles and this certainly hasn"t been fully thought out yet!  

Some nice ideas in there.

I don"t see it as the bigger clubs getting bad press at all tbh and GL to you, as I"ve said many times your trojan efforts at recruiting deserve some reward and should carry some advantage. Currrently that advantage is insurmountable for some teams.

[Foggy]

Firstly it is a shame that the bigger clubs are getting a little bad press over the numbers they do get.   I can only speak with our club (Luton) but we manage to get high numbers through good networking within our club, and some hard work put in at the start in recruiting (Maybe sometimes a little too eager! )  But my point is, we have done nothing different that other clubs could do?  

Anyhoooo...

The points player ratio is a good idea, but was mentioned before maybe distracts from APAT obtaining newer players, promoting its brand through the online league.

And, again as before, it could detract from clubs signing up new players.

So my 2p..

To have a squad of players in each club but have a maximum of XX per club actually playing the matchday.

A) Each club could have numerous members - making sure APAT grows

B) No club with smaller members are "punished" for a lack of numbers.

It could be up to the captain to select that weeks palyers, or could be done on a rotation basis..or APAT could enforce that all players must play at least 5 games...etc....

Just thoughts running through my head....and now putting it out there....i"m sure I havent thought of all angles and this certainly hasn"t been fully thought out yet!  

Some nice ideas in there.

I don"t see it as the bigger clubs getting bad press at all tbh and GL to you, as I"ve said many times your trojan efforts at recruiting deserve some reward and should carry some advantage. Currrently that advantage is insurmountable for some teams.

Just a small point and not sour grapes because of the Brum league position,which is due to poor turnout and lack of interest, as I have been led to believe. Is the proximitry of the clubs! Looking geographically at the clubs around the UK, there are miles between the competing teams, but not in the Midlands. We have a team in Birmingham and also a team in Walsall, just a small wedge from our centre. My suggestion would be to close the Walsall club and transfer them all to Birmingham under the guidance of our captain Ant 66

[ian.ski309]

Firstly it is a shame that the bigger clubs are getting a little bad press over the numbers they do get.  

I don"t think that"s what anyone intended Waz, as Brendan quite rightly points out your efforts at recruitment are to be applauded. It"s just that when two teams regularly supply 65% of the runners, the competitive element is removed for the other teams and it ceases to be a contest.

Of course, there"s nothing to stop the rest of us simply stumping up our $10 and just playing for the cash - but when you factor in team play, etc, the also-rans are again at a disadvantage.

If I were a newcomer to APAT looking to get involved in this league with the current criteria in place, there only seems to be two options... either join a team which already has huge numbers or don"t join at all - hence the strong will get stronger and the weak get weaker.

[TheSnapper]

Some points relating to the online league / number of players in a team debate:

I acknowledge that the current system needs looking at but the proposal of dividing points by the number of players in a team is flawed in my opinion for the following reasons.

1. Surely part of the role of the captain and team members is to encourage more and more players to join the team, which in many cases acts as their intro to APAT and in some cases "real" poker, so it"s all good. Under this proposal inexperienced players could make numbers a disadvantage.

Totally correct, that would be as unfair on the bigger teams as the current format is on the smaller teams.

I acknowledge that I am saying all of this from the point of view of playing for one of the most populated teams, but that links back to point one. At Luton we have been actively recruiting and some of the new players in turn bought their friends along - our fun and friendly live game recently has also done us no harm either - and IMO THAT"s what APAT is about

Again. your point is well made and irrefutable. The challenge is to both retain that aspect and provide a format that offers a chance to compete for the smaller teams who either don"t / can"t put as much effort into recruiting or are genuinely limited to a smaller pool of players.