Poker Forum > General Discussion
Season 6 Discussion
Des:
--- Quote from: galvo68 on February 19, 2012, 21:17:12 PM ---
thanks for that des will register for stars xx
--- End quote ---
click the banner! ;)
Des:
As APAT prepare to annouce further season six details towards the end of this week, there are still a few decisions that we have yet to finalise. I"m going to share these with you as they are very important and your feedback could tip the balance one way or another.
1) Registration Fee
Whether to add a registration fee is the single biggest decision facing APAT at the moment.
APAT has paid the registration fee of every player who has played a live Championship event with us over the past five years and I said earlier in this thread, that"s something that I"m very proud of. However, the poker market is going through a very challenging time right now. There is also a wealth of live options available to poker budget holders, who can often acquire players more competitively through google search campaigns and signup offers.
As the owner of the APAT budget, I found myself in the strange position last year of wanting to run smaller tournaments later in the season to ensure we were able to make our budget work as hard as we could. This is a conflicting position, because in requiring smaller number tournaments, we end up not promoting the events to our membership as a whole and clearly that"s a viscious circle we need to get out of.
The addition of a 10% registration fee - which would go in its entirity to the venue to cover their costs - would enable us to promote our events hard again, and I feel that it is essential that we get back in growth mode.
What do you guys think, because if we go ahead with a reg fee, ultimately it"s going to cost you money when you play?
2) Scheduling
For the past two seasons in particular, APAT has run a National Live event every month. In my opinion it"s too much.
I think it must be challenging for so many of our members to be able to travel and play on a monthly basis and similarly it is difficult to effectively promote as there is too much going to between the live events, online championship events, online league, not to mention satellites and direct buy in events.
My view is that we should go to a Festival style weekend once every two months. That gives us more time to run satellites and promote the events hard. Over the festival weekend, I can see us having the Online Championship event on the Thursday night, a member get together on the Friday night, the main event over Saturday and Sunday, a live event on Saturday night, a live event on Sunday afternoon and a one table Cash Tour event over the weekend also.
3) Winners packages
We"ve offered live professional event entries to all of our winners for the past five years. An idea that we are considering is to offer the winner of every live and online event this year a World Championship of Amateur Poker passport, offering the main event and three side event entries. Although the value of this prize may be a little less than a Genting entry for example, it feels like a great idea to me to have every Amateur and Online Champion together at the WCOAP, where we can also add the Awards night, and create something really huge. What do you guys think?
daveyb147:
I for one dont have a problem with reg fees,,especially if it helps apat to grow,,,also your views on the schedule seem to make perfect sense,,,i have always liked however the added value of a gukpt or ukipt seat for tournament winners,,its nice to then follow the apat players in these events and see how they do at the next level of poker !!
Looking forward to season 6 whatever is decided,,,keep up the good work !!!
Curlarge:
--- Quote from: Des on February 20, 2012, 16:09:48 PM ---
As APAT prepare to annouce further season six details towards the end of this week, there are still a few decisions that we have yet to finalise. I"m going to share these with you as they are very important and your feedback could tip the balance one way or another.
1) Registration Fee
Whether to add a registration fee is the single biggest decision facing APAT at the moment.
APAT has paid the registration fee of every player who has played a live Championship event with us over the past five years and I said earlier in this thread, that"s something that I"m very proud of. However, the poker market is going through a very challenging time right now. There is also a wealth of live options available to poker budget holders, who can often acquire players more competitively through google search campaigns and signup offers.
As the owner of the APAT budget, I found myself in the strange position last year of wanting to run smaller tournaments later in the season to ensure we were able to make our budget work as hard as we could. This is a conflicting position, because in requiring smaller number tournaments, we end up not promoting the events to our membership as a whole and clearly that"s a viscious circle we need to get out of.
The addition of a 10% registration fee - which would go in its entirity to the venue to cover their costs - would enable us to promote our events hard again, and I feel that it is essential that we get back in growth mode.
What do you guys think, because if we go ahead with a reg fee, ultimately it"s going to cost you money when you play?
2) Scheduling
For the past two seasons in particular, APAT has run a National Live event every month. In my opinion it"s too much.
I think it must be challenging for so many of our members to be able to travel and play on a monthly basis and similarly it is difficult to effectively promote as there is too much going to between the live events, online championship events, online league, not to mention satellites and direct buy in events.
My view is that we should go to a Festival style weekend once every two months. That gives us more time to run satellites and promote the events hard. Over the festival weekend, I can see us having the Online Championship event on the Thursday night, a member get together on the Friday night, the main event over Saturday and Sunday, a live event on Saturday night, a live event on Sunday afternoon and a one table Cash Tour event over the weekend also.
3) Winners packages
We"ve offered live professional event entries to all of our winners for the past five years. An idea that we are considering is to offer the winner of every live and online event this year a World Championship of Amateur Poker passport, offering the main event and three side event entries. Although the value of this prize may be a little less than a Genting entry for example, it feels like a great idea to me to have every Amateur and Online Champion together at the WCOAP, where we can also add the Awards night, and create something really huge. What do you guys think?
--- End quote ---
IMHO everything here makes perfect sense.
The market has changed, lets go with it (might like to consider the 15k starting stack also). Even with 10% juice, it"s still a very hard product to beat.
Bi-monthly Live events will hopefully promote more runners and more competition.
Passports are very worthy prize in their own right.
All in all, excellent.
Paulie_D:
A quick response before I cogitate further.
I don"t have a problem with a 10% reg. fee. I know it would be a real heart-breaker for you to have to implement this but in the current market (viz. sponsorship &/or competition) I don"t see any real alternative.
On the schedule side, I"d have to say that while I think there are, perhaps, too many events over a 12 month period, I think that just 6 weekends (and that"s what it basically breaks down to) is not enough...for me.
APAT has a wonderful product and whilst I can foresee that restricting the number of events will drive up the demand for seats I don"t see that there is any capacity to increase the number of available places at the venues of which I am aware...that will lead to people (at least it seems to me) being disappointed in not getting seats and losing interest.
A festival event sounds great but in practice I think the majority of the membership will bail on anything other than Saturday and, perhaps, Sunday.
You know me, I"ll turn up to the opening of an envelope and a paring down of the schedule isn"t automatically bad (Pub Poker Champs anyone?) but I think 6 event schedule is a cut to far.
I"ll have to look and see what my "ideal minimum" would be.
On the added value, I"ve always treated this a the cherry on top so anything is good with me. The only "problem" I see with the WCOAP passport idea is that you won"t get 6 events in before the WCOAP. Presumably, anything won after the WCOAP would be for the next year?
More later
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version