Season 6 Discussion

[Paulie_D]

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.

Thank you...the break in June 2012 is actually Sat - Tue (they moved the May bank holiday)...I"m just saying.

[daveyb147]

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.
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thought most were in the north lol

[Paulie_D]

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.

thought most were in the north lol

It"s the quality of the people in the South not the quantity.

[Swinebag]

 On Brian"s idea for a CoC event, i first thought it was a terrible idea but then i realised, i"d won an online title so it"s now a goer for me.....

Seriously though it"s not a bad idea, but it does exclude too many members and would take up too many resources at the expense of a national for it to be a viable event. Maybe having it as a Friday night crapshoot the night before a National would be a goer?

Will post a few more thoughts on S6 later...

[Robbiebox]

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.

Superb post, very important to consider this with next years plans. I also will have a go at posting my ideas in next few days.

[nooteboom17]

i would love to see an apat event either in austria or in czech republic!

[TightEnd]

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.

the problem with this is the schedule is so crowded

We cannot go earlier in August...WSOP and summer holidays

If we go even a week later we"re into DTD Deepstack and then the Sky Poker Tour Grand Final

Currently we are booked into DTD for the same weekend next year

This year we had nearly 900 players (not unique players, obviously some played several events) over the WCOAP festival which was a good performance

Next year will be the fourth WCOAP on the same weekend, now an established event in the calendar.

it is a difficult event to move for reasons described above

[TightEnd]

Please an APAT in liverpool !!!

Circus or leo s could easily stage it .

Apart from that happy with whatever you decide .

Do either venue have a track record of succesfully running third party large events?

If so, details please

Didn"t the Genting megastack in liverpool flop?

[TightEnd]

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 ?  

Mostly likely it will be the Macau again

Overseas events...most likely to make them off season so people will be free of family holiday commitments. This is the first time I have heard someone wanting an overseas event in the summer, at a time when most will be on family hoilidays

Walsall, yes, a good refurbishment. On my "long list". Gala"s...not generally interested in hosting us, unless anyone lets me know different I have 20 or so venues on the list before any Gala


Online league. The aim will be to have a schedule, on one site, announce it at the start and stick with it. This year has been unsatisfactory for several reasons, not to be repeated we hope

Timing of events. Well not easy. The GUKPTs are established mid month, the UKIPTs are established third weekends, first weekends have DTD Deepstack, Genting megastacks etc. It tends to be that the final weekend of each month is where there are free slots in the calendar for us, looking not to clash as much as possible

[TightEnd]

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.  

Magazine. On the way very shortly, been in progress a few weeks

Association. Yes. Time and resource!

Live feed. Entirely down to the sponsorship package secured

HoF I think I am the only entry to be written up, and I am not writing my own!

[TightEnd]

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.

The majority of events are already Midlands and North!

[TightEnd]

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.

Superb post, very important to consider this with next years plans. I also will have a go at posting my ideas in next few days.

When we started there was very little festival poker apart from the individual casino weeks such as Midlands Meltdown, Christmas Cracker etc

Since then we have GUKPT, GBPT, UKIPT, SPT as well as PKR Live, betfair Live etc etc etc at varying buy in levels all with different attractions

So, the competitive landscape is more challenging, players have a lot more choice and allied to that post black friday/online poker rooms struggling the Sponsorship environment is extremely different

The plan for S6 is to push forward and take APAT onwards (new concepts being a part of that), within the overall remit of providing affordable and registration free recreational poker with festival structures  

[Marty719]

Everything is perfect Amsterdam for a European venue!

[TightEnd]

Everything is perfect Amsterdam for a European venue!

would love to, but Holland Casinos are government owned and prohibit tournaments from third party providers in their country.

Hence you don"t see EPT, WPT etc there either

[Fatcatstu]

can we PLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE do Tallinn again? pretty pretty please?