Season 6 Discussion

[Des]

Great feedback so far guys...keep it coming.

What would you think of a cash tournament that you could exit at any point, but there is an incentive of a pro event seat at the end for the last man standing. 

Runs as a tournament but you would sit with £100 in chips with blinds at £1 / £2 to start.  The blinds would increase over time.

[Paulie_D]

{I actually meant get you to book them for APAT so APAT can offer them to sat winners, then assist the winners with booking their flights}

I kind of like the idea....it would mean that winning the satellite actually meant that you HAD to play the seat you"d won...no cashing out.

Not sure how popular that would be for the casual player though.

[Paulie_D]

Great feedback so far guys...keep it coming.

What would you think of a cash tournament that you could exit at any point, but there is an incentive of a pro event seat at the end for the last man standing. 

Runs as a tournament but you would sit with £100 in chips with blinds at £1 / £2 to start.  The blinds would increase over time.

I think that would work as part of a larger "festival" (WCOAP) or the like...or as a side event... but, speaking for myself, I wouldn"t want to lose a "standard" Event for it.

[pables]

Just a thought, could we get sponsorship from Carlsberg,Bulmers,Adagio etc  

[Fluence]

I"ll give it more thought and post some more in a day or two.

In the meantime may I just make one (rather lengthy) point.

Up until this year there was not a single tournament anywhere in the UK for around £100 that I would rather play than an APAT event. This is for several reasons which we all know about.

Prestige
Banter
Excellent Structure
Big tourney feel for small buy ins etc, etc.


Also of all the APAT events the WCOAP in particular is the top of the pile and the whole event is just superb.

However this year having won seat(s) very cheaply for the Goliath at Coventry I played it and this restricted my participation in the WCOAP to just the main event.

It was a great shame for me that the 2 events clashed.

They have not announced it officially yet but after speaking to the guy who came up with the idea for the Goliath in the first place they have already had discussions re 2012 and are 99.9% certain it will run in the same week next year. Up to and including the August Bank Holiday weekend in 2012.

2012 will have 3 day 1"s Wed, Thurs, Fri. Day 2 Sat, Day 3 Sunday with the Final table on bank holiday Monday. Each of the 3 day ones will be capped at 1,000 players as they will be using an even bigger hall than they did this year. They will fill it for sure.

I know it"s your decision how and when you run your events but I wanted to let you know of the dates as it will potentially reduce your numbers for what is rightly your premier event. For me personally if they do run in the same week I know I"ll have some difficult choices to make.

[scouse3465]

Please an APAT in liverpool !!!

Circus or leo s could easily stage it .

Apart from that happy with whatever you decide .

[scouse3465]

Oh one other thing , maybe putting teams together in league like birmingham / walsall did last year. Otherwise would be pretty pointless playing next year!

such as liverpool / manchester, dublin /belfast, glasgow/ edinburgh etc . Just dont give the west midlands any more players bit naughty last year giving walsall as champs more players (only team to get players form another div 1 team) be nice to get the playin field a bit more level and could give other teams a chance !

[BOINGBLITZ]

OK then, here we go....

Countries - I would like to see Dublin back on the schedule personally as I just love going there (didn"t we all ?) but if as stated elsewhere, the plan would be to move it to a different time, then so be it.
If there is going to be an APAT "Non-British" event, then why not Spain or Portugal, but make it between May-September so it could be used as an excuse to take the family away on holiday ?

Venues - Would love to see Walsall back on the map, especially now that it is a "G" but if not, then by all accounts the Gala in Brum is now pretty good.

WCOAP - DTD is the obvious venue for this.

Online League - This has suffered greatly this year due to the moving of sites and times etc and while I sympathise with the behind-the-scenes problems encountered by you at APAT, this needs sorting for S6 or else there will be no League left.

Timing of live events - I don"t know what the majority feel about this, but for me, telling the Mrs that I am away EVERY Bank Holiday weekend with APAT did not go down well !!  Do they have to be the last weekend ?

Finally, an idea of my own.
I want to put forward an idea that I broached with Leigh just before he left the APAT heirarchy....and I fully believe that this event would be worthy of being a stand-alone tournament with a great deep structure and that is a CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS tourney.
 APAT now boasts 5 seasons of Online and Live Champions and it is my opinion that an invitation-only event of this nature would attract a good sized field (possibly a £100 entry?) and would probably be "The One" that anyone eligible would want to win.
 It could be run once every season, maybe as the season-opener, and then every player winning a Title in Season 6 would know that they would be getting an invite to The event in Season 7 and so on.
 Any thoughts guys n gals ?  

[Paulie_D]

Goliath at Coventry

It was a great shame for me that the 2 events clashed.

They have not announced it officially yet but after speaking to the guy who came up with the idea for the Goliath in the first place they have already had discussions re 2012 and are 99.9% certain it will run in the same week next year. Up to and including the August Bank Holiday weekend in 2012.

There is a 4 day break in June in 2012 due to the Jubilee...I"m just saying.

[SirPercival]

Well done APAT on 5 seasons of success.

As most know, I am a big fan of APAT and have played a few events each season. I do always admire Des and the teams approach to taking on board comments made by members and people often forget that they can"t please everyone all of the time.

My opinion is that when APAT started it was unique, it was groundbreaking, and it was new. In the first few seasons it grew and stayed ahead of the rest, it retained it"s USPs. Some ideas were tried that didn"t work but the ones that did stuck and grew more.

but.... IMO the momentum is not what it used to be. The core "product" is still excellent and still the prefered choice of many, the new ideas are good, but the fact is the other are catching up. I would even go as far as saying the others are in some ways ahead. Before the defenders of all things APAT step in can I say that I am not critising APAT or the team that put it all together I am mearly saying that IMO the others have caught up and there is a risk that they will soon be the ones holding the Aces.

So what is the "vision"? a question I have asked many times before on this forum. Do APAT want to stay ahead of the pack, do they want to continue providing the excellent tour as is with some year on year improvements? do they want to go global? do they want to influence the poker world and drive out rake in all tournamnets?, are they going to push for standard rules? do they want to be the springboard for players looking to get into bigger events or do they themselves want to provide those bigger events?

Share the vision Des - then the ideas for improvement can be aligned to that vision.

[shug]

imo,,there should be less team events and less events abroad,,,these events rule out to many players,,players may then look elsewhere for a game and not come back.

I agree

[shug]

great idea from Paulie, if we are to have another 3 day event a Fri-Sun would allow those who can only get weekends off to compete.
I love the tourney structure and think you have got it right.

[shug]

I also don`t see a problem with going to a successful venue twice in a season if it suits our purpose

[SirPercival]

Last year I asked this after the announcement.  :"(

Des et al,

Where are we on the following?

APAT Magazine
APAT Association
APAT TV (live feed / no live feed?)
APAT Hall of Fame (did Tighty have a deadline for the write up on the latest entrant?)

Too busy on essential set up work with our new partner to get into any of this at the moment Stuart.

This year I"ll ask it before.  

[Santino67]

Like most people I think it"s agreed that you all do an awesome job. Only think I"d like to change/add is a couple more northern venues (Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Blackpool etc) for individual events.