APAT Season 5: Discussion

[Claw75]

please don"t increase the buy in!  APATs aren"t about big buyins/prizepools.  If anything I"d be in favour of dropping it to £50 to widen the potential pool of players, but £75 has worked in the past and can"t see the need to change it, particularly when times are tight for a lot of people.

+1.  Plenty of big buy ins for those that want them in other tours.

Keep the APAT 75!

But £100 ers in other tours are not APATs and I want to play the APATs and its more economic to do so with a £100 buy in. Let me illustrate:


Assuming 200 Players...

Current prize for 1st (23%)    £3500

Buy in                    £75
Life Rake (beer, Hotel etc)   £150
Total Cost                £225

Therefore 1 bink gives you 15.5 National Tournaments

£100 buy in

1st Prize      £4600   

Buy in      £100
Life Rake                £150
Total Cost   £250

Therefore 1 bink give you 18.4 National Tournaments

So.. Its more economical to have a higher buy in

don"t know about anyone else, but I don"t budget that much for APAT events - I can"t.  At the moment I only play if I satellite in, meaning I just have to find a bit of money for accommodation and expenses, which are done as frugally as possible.  Let"s assume for the sake of illustration that I"m buying the seat though.

buy in - £75
Hotel (shared if possible, or even better, free from Andrew) - approx £30
Travel - £20 (cheap advance booked train)
Other expenses (food, drink) - £30

total - £155. 

The difference between finding £155 and £180 might just be the tipping point for some people and £130 would definitely be preferable from a personal point of view - it"s not about equity, it"s about affordability and keeping the APATs as open to as many amateurs as possible. plus I never bink APATs so all money has to be treated as spent rather than invested

[Delboy]

please don"t increase the buy in!  APATs aren"t about big buyins/prizepools.  If anything I"d be in favour of dropping it to £50 to widen the potential pool of players, but £75 has worked in the past and can"t see the need to change it, particularly when times are tight for a lot of people.

+1.  Plenty of big buy ins for those that want them in other tours.

Keep the APAT 75!

But £100 ers in other tours are not APATs and I want to play the APATs and its more economic to do so with a £100 buy in. Let me illustrate:


Assuming 200 Players...

Current prize for 1st (23%)    £3500

Buy in                    £75
Life Rake (beer, Hotel etc)   £150
Total Cost                £225

Therefore 1 bink gives you 15.5 National Tournaments

£100 buy in

1st Prize      £4600   

Buy in      £100
Life Rake                £150
Total Cost   £250

Therefore 1 bink give you 18.4 National Tournaments

So.. Its more economical to have a higher buy in

don"t know about anyone else, but I don"t budget that much for APAT events - I can"t.  At the moment I only play if I satellite in, meaning I just have to find a bit of money for accommodation and expenses, which are done as frugally as possible.  Let"s assume for the sake of illustration that I"m buying the seat though.

buy in - £75
Hotel (shared if possible, or even better, free from Andrew) - approx £30
Travel - £20 (cheap advance booked train)
Other expenses (food, drink) - £30

total - £155. 

The difference between finding £155 and £180 might just be the tipping point for some people and £130 would definitely be preferable from a personal point of view - it"s not about equity, it"s about affordability and keeping the APATs as open to as many amateurs as possible. plus I never bink APATs so all money has to be treated as spent rather than invested

My point is that because the expenses are constant for each event a higher buy in is better..

Also with the higher buy in the satellites would be more popular creating more seats for a specialist like yourself

[Claw75]

My point is that because the expenses are constant for each event a higher buy in is better..

Also with the higher buy in the satellites would be more popular creating more seats for a specialist like yourself

yeah I take the point.  If I was any good at sats I"d agree with you too  I"m not playing coventry next week because I didn"t win a seat and I couldn"t justify buying in for £75.  If it"d have been a £50 buy in though I reckon I could"ve scraped it together and saved for the other expenses.  £100 would just make it a complete non-runner.

[Swinebag]

love Jons idea for the national league

wish I"d never mentioned the buy in increase. Can see that most people want to keep it at £75 so that"s ok by me

[Jon MW]

...

My point is that because the expenses are constant for each event a higher buy in is better..
...

So why not raise it to £1000?

Most people won"t bink a win, so the economics don"t matter. It"s also a much healthier economic outlook to budget the cost of the tournament as a write-off rather than ever take into account any possible win - even if you have better than average odds of cashing.

My main point was that it"s very basic economics that if you increase the price you"ll decrease the demand.
I don"t think that the extra demand created for those interested because of the higher prize pool will be anywhere close to the demand lost because of the extra cost.

So demand will go down overall - even if there"s enough excess demand to avoid this causing UK National events to not sell out it will damage APAT and cut out a significant portion of it"s core base of support (and potential future support).

[nosey-p]

We have 4 comps in England, why not split them into different buy-ins? The worlds and the European can be £100 the other 2 can be £75

You could even go as far and have 4 different buy inns

English £50
UK £75
European £100
Worlds £125

 
But I would be in favour of keeping the £75

[Mikeyboy9361]

Leave it at £75, with travel and accommodation plus drink, these are quite expensive, and having only cashed once in a live event, we play in hope rather than expectation of a win! As mentioned previously £100 will make a lot of people think again about playing. The APAT events on line and live are the biggest buy in events I play, and I do so because of the great structure and the banter.

[WarBwastardo]

So why not raise it to £1000?

Because this is amateur poker and that would be silly.

My main point was that it"s very basic economics that if you increase the price you"ll decrease the demand.
I don"t think that the extra demand created for those interested because of the higher prize pool will be anywhere close to the demand lost because of the extra cost.

So demand will go down overall - even if there"s enough excess demand to avoid this causing UK National events to not sell out it will damage APAT and cut out a significant portion of it"s core base of support (and potential future support).

Not strictly true. Demand may go down with some current regular APATers, but there might be untapped hundreds who won"t travel for a £50-£75 game, but will for buy-ins of £100-£150. They"re still amateurs so if they happened to be the larger group it would be wrong not to seek them out no?  It"s not such a huge hike that you"d suddenly have a completely new crowd.

The point is it"s by no means certain demand for seats would drop, it would just drop within a certain group of players, but a bigger buy-in may appeal to many more. You won"t know for sure unless you try it.

The end.

[RioRodent]

please don"t increase the buy in!  APATs aren"t about big buyins/prizepools.  If anything I"d be in favour of dropping it to £50 to widen the potential pool of players, but £75 has worked in the past and can"t see the need to change it, particularly when times are tight for a lot of people.

+1.  Plenty of big buy ins for those that want them in other tours.

Keep the APAT 75!

But £100 ers in other tours are not APATs and I want to play the APATs and its more economic to do so with a £100 buy in. Let me illustrate:


Assuming 200 Players...

Current prize for 1st (23%)    £3500

Buy in                    £75
Life Rake (beer, Hotel etc)   £150
Total Cost                £225

Therefore 1 bink gives you 15.5 National Tournaments

£100 buy in

1st Prize      £4600   

Buy in      £100
Life Rake                £150
Total Cost   £250

Therefore 1 bink give you 18.4 National Tournaments

So.. Its more economical to have a higher buy in

don"t know about anyone else, but I don"t budget that much for APAT events - I can"t.  At the moment I only play if I satellite in, meaning I just have to find a bit of money for accommodation and expenses, which are done as frugally as possible.  Let"s assume for the sake of illustration that I"m buying the seat though.

buy in - £75
Hotel (shared if possible, or even better, free from Andrew) - approx £30
Travel - £20 (cheap advance booked train)
Other expenses (food, drink) - £30

total - £155. 

The difference between finding £155 and £180 might just be the tipping point for some people and £130 would definitely be preferable from a personal point of view - it"s not about equity, it"s about affordability and keeping the APATs as open to as many amateurs as possible. plus I never bink APATs so all money has to be treated as spent rather than invested

Claire, it"s like the January Sales... the more you spend, the more you save! I would have that as woman you would understand this concept... just basic economics really.

[Jon MW]

So why not raise it to £1000?

Because this is amateur poker and that would be silly.

My main point was that it"s very basic economics that if you increase the price you"ll decrease the demand.
I don"t think that the extra demand created for those interested because of the higher prize pool will be anywhere close to the demand lost because of the extra cost.

So demand will go down overall - even if there"s enough excess demand to avoid this causing UK National events to not sell out it will damage APAT and cut out a significant portion of it"s core base of support (and potential future support).

Not strictly true. Demand may go down with some current regular APATers, but there might be untapped hundreds who won"t travel for a £50-£75 game, but will for buy-ins of £100-£150. They"re still amateurs so if they happened to be the larger group it would be wrong not to seek them out no?  It"s not such a huge hike that you"d suddenly have a completely new crowd.

The point is it"s by no means certain demand for seats would drop, it would just drop within a certain group of players, but a bigger buy-in may appeal to many more. You won"t know for sure unless you try it.

The end.

I"m pretty sure I covered your second point straight after the bit you highlighted

[Jon MW]

... there might be untapped hundreds who won"t travel for a £50-£75 game, but will for buy-ins of £100-£150...

More specifically, there might be, but I don"t think there is. I think the untapped market for APAT follows roughly the same demographic as the existing market - some people will be happy with £100, but most would prefer £75

[WarBwastardo]

... there might be untapped hundreds who won"t travel for a £50-£75 game, but will for buy-ins of £100-£150...

More specifically, there might be, but I don"t think there is. I think the untapped market for APAT follows roughly the same demographic as the existing market - some people will be happy with £100, but most would prefer £75

But we"re speculating aren"t we..it"s just opinions and we won"t know for sure unless it"s tried and to be fair, if the extra £25 would prevent someone playing they ought not to be playing the £75 game either surely?  So this should be a debate about whether increasing the prize-pool would attract more people rather than the affordability of the event.

[Jon MW]

... there might be untapped hundreds who won"t travel for a £50-£75 game, but will for buy-ins of £100-£150...

More specifically, there might be, but I don"t think there is. I think the untapped market for APAT follows roughly the same demographic as the existing market - some people will be happy with £100, but most would prefer £75

But we"re speculating aren"t we..it"s just opinions ...

yes

[Quasar]

I"m sure someone  will correct me if I"m wrong but the UK APAT games always sell out don"t they?  I was under the impression that the venues couldn"t cater for any more players at one time, so what is the point in wanting to attract more people, unless APAT are looking to dramatically increase numbers and create 2 x Day 1, which means time off work . For me the key word here is Amateur. I attended Luton and this was my first live APAT event, although I"m a pretty regular online supporter. It can"t have been too bad an experience because I"m off to Coventry next week.

I"m another in favour of keeping it at £75. There are loads of tournaments with a higher buy in if people want to play those. The APAT games give people like me on a low bankroll a chance to play live in a nice environment. If you start upping the buy in you price out lots of people like myself and start attracting the more serious players. That"s fine if that"s the eventual aim of APAT.

I think someone also mentioned the point that if you price out people like me (losing, rubbish poker players  )  it will change the entire dynamics of the APAT games.

[WarBwastardo]

I"m sure someone  will correct me if I"m wrong but the UK APAT games always sell out don"t they?  I was under the impression that the venues couldn"t cater for any more players at one time, so what is the point in wanting to attract more people, unless APAT are looking to dramatically increase numbers and create 2 x Day 1, which means time off work .

It"s obviously not about attracting more players to any single event, it"s about extending the community as a whole, which must surely be a good thing.  You can"t very well turn people away cause we already have enough players.

All of your other points are covered elsewhere so we"re probably just repeating ourselves now.  I still maintain that it"s not a big enough hike that it should be a bank-roll issue.  The defense rests M"lud.

I think someone also mentioned the point that if you price out people like me (losing, rubbish poker players  )  it will change the entire dynamics of the APAT games.

Not really, playing ability isn"t commensurate to wealth, not for amateurs anyway.