I've never played APA. I'm an off and on tournament player.I would love to pick up a mid week night out playing. So if I don't have a team and they just assigned me one, how does it work if it turns out these guys are a bunch of drunks?Do you just switch whenever you want or what? And the local rosters seem to have a lot of guys on every team at the place I want to play. How do you ensure that you play every week or is it not up to you at all?
Others have it covered pretty well. Let me just add that if you want to make sure you play every week, you can join a team that only has five players. There is no rule saying you have to have 8 players....
The challenge with that is that inevitably someone can't come for any of a variety of reasons....work, family, sick, etc. Then you have to forfeit a match, if you only have 5 players.
Ths other challenge to five person team is the 23 rule. If you're new to APA, let me summarize it quickly. Every player has a Skill Level. (People also call it a handicap) A team can only play a total of 23 Skill Level points each night, to prevent stacking teams with too many strong players.
If your five-person team has too many strong players, their Skill Levels will eventually get raised, and you may not be able to play all five. Thus the need for more than five players, to have a few lower level players to balance out the stronger players and still be able to play five matches.