Poker League Software - Is There a Market for a Premium Product? (1 Viewer)

[Fiskfan]

Hi all

To Maxie Mike, who started this thread: Below are some things we noticed are asked for out there, and that myself has been great need of... I think you are on to something (since we have done the very same thing, sort of...)

Some background first:
I have managed poker tournaments (and cash games) for many years now, and in recent years I have been running a card room / poker club.

I have been using Tournament Director already mentioned and others (like Blind Valet).

After running 3 tournaments every week for several years we needed something else, and that resulted in a solution that works well with Tournament Director.

We created this solution because all administration around running a Poker Room is many hours of work.

The process a long time ago was to get registrations from a Facebook page, and text messages in different ways (SMS, Snapchat and so on).

Communication with players was mainly via Facebook and information about tournaments was sent out the same way.

Ranking, leagues and similar things were calculated, in the best case, with Excel or Google Sheets.

Membership fees (yearly) were written down on paper.

Accounting was either not done at all, or with pen and paper.


Since some of us running this card room have the experience from work to create, maintain and support software solutions, we created a software for us to use.
Now, we are on our way to release it to others who run a poker club. This does not mean that more people can create this software, please do, competition is good.

Some of the features we have:

Member Management
Keep track of contact information, membership fees, applications and more.

Ranking / Leagues
Use our formulas or create your own, have (multiple) Leagues and keep track of who is the best player in your club.

Accounting
Keep track of expenses, rake and other financial happenings that impact your club.

Tournament Management
Manage tournaments, easy registration, templates for blind structures and import results from Tournament Director.
As soon as you import results from your tournament, your club members can see the results and the ranking is updated.

The tool we created can calculate the blind levels for you. In our case - we want our tournaments to end by midnight. I enter the time for start and end and the tool calculates the blind level lengths for me. This is handy and is very often within a 5-25 minutes range of whats asked for...

Statistics
Every metric you would like can be here, and we are developing continuously - and are welcoming more KPI’s to present. Today I see ROI, average results, graphs, who I bust the most, who bust me the most and so on.

Easy Communication
If you need to contact all players who are registered for a tournament, or all players, our software helps out with that.


We have been using this software now for more than a year, and we keep developing it.


For me, when I manage a poker tournament, the workload is like this:

• Create a tournament in our backend administration tool (web based, from my phone, computer or tablet)
  
  
• The day of the tournament, I set the tournament up in Tournament director, that is quickly done.
  
  
• I use Tournament Director for registering who plays, buyin, rebuy, reentry, addon and in the end, busts.
  If someone who wants to play has not paid the yearly membership fee, I get a notice about that.
  
  
• When the tournament is over, I export from Tournament director and upload the file to our backend. That takes less than 60 seconds.

Now, our webpage is updated with all facts about the tournament we just played, ranking is updated, leagues are updated and so on.
All this saves me a ton of time and we are no longer dependent on Facebook (not everyone has got a Facebook account too).

Our members find our webpage really useful, they can see their own statistics, tournaments (upcoming and past) and so much more.

Every quarter, we have a final and all players get extra chips depending on their ranking score for the last quarter. All this is configurable and saves me a ton of time.
In the tool, I just make the quarter final as a ranking tournament and the magic in the background does the work for me.

At the moment, we are adding some features like badges (win streak, or ITM streak and more), live reporting and some other good stuff…

Our webapp is fully responsive so we don't see a need to create a dedicated mobile app at the moment.

We are also looking into some other cool ideas that we would like to see peoples reactions on. This is a networking part of the poker club scene, we will get back to whoever wants to know more, when we are ready to present this part.

And yes, as some people already have figured out, we might also just do a more simple version of what Tournament Director does today, so you can skip that and only use our solution.

When it comes to forum rules, I am not sure if I can post the link to our landing page where you can show interest in this, so I won’t - until I get OK from admin to do it.
(I have this in mind ”…shall not post any referral links” and the bullet just after that one, since I am one of the guys behind this software)

Attached, a screenshot from part of my personal statistics as a player that all players can see (their personal stats, not mine)




Translation on the some of the words in the screenshot:
Plats = What position I busted in
Pris = Money I won
Poäng = points
Utslagen av = The name of the fool who busted me
Totalt = Total
Snitt = Average
Turneringar = Number of tournaments
I ÅR = This Year
Rankingpoäng = Ranking points
Prisplacering = ITM
Vinstpengar = Money won

And to answer a question that you might have right now: Yes, this is made to support english mainly.

And I am sorry for my english not beeing perfect, but I guess you understand most of what I am writing

All the best!

 

[Eriks]

Hi all

To Maxie Mike, who started this thread: Below are some things we noticed are asked for out there, and that myself has been great need of... I think you are on to something (since we have done the very same thing, sort of...)

Some background first:
I have managed poker tournaments (and cash games) for many years now, and in recent years I have been running a card room / poker club.

I have been using Tournament Director already mentioned and others (like Blind Valet).

After running 3 tournaments every week for several years we needed something else, and that resulted in a solution that works well with Tournament Director.

We created this solution because all administration around running a Poker Room is many hours of work.

The process a long time ago was to get registrations from a Facebook page, and text messages in different ways (SMS, Snapchat and so on).

Communication with players was mainly via Facebook and information about tournaments was sent out the same way.

Ranking, leagues and similar things were calculated, in the best case, with Excel or Google Sheets.

Membership fees (yearly) were written down on paper.

Accounting was either not done at all, or with pen and paper.


Since some of us running this card room have the experience from work to create, maintain and support software solutions, we created a software for us to use.
Now, we are on our way to release it to others who run a poker club. This does not mean that more people can create this software, please do, competition is good.

Some of the features we have:

Member Management
Keep track of contact information, membership fees, applications and more.

Ranking / Leagues
Use our formulas or create your own, have (multiple) Leagues and keep track of who is the best player in your club.

Accounting
Keep track of expenses, rake and other financial happenings that impact your club.

Tournament Management
Manage tournaments, easy registration, templates for blind structures and import results from Tournament Director.
As soon as you import results from your tournament, your club members can see the results and the ranking is updated.

The tool we created can calculate the blind levels for you. In our case - we want our tournaments to end by midnight. I enter the time for start and end and the tool calculates the blind level lengths for me. This is handy and is very often within a 5-25 minutes range of whats asked for...

Statistics
Every metric you would like can be here, and we are developing continuously - and are welcoming more KPI’s to present. Today I see ROI, average results, graphs, who I bust the most, who bust me the most and so on.

Easy Communication
If you need to contact all players who are registered for a tournament, or all players, our software helps out with that.


We have been using this software now for more than a year, and we keep developing it.


For me, when I manage a poker tournament, the workload is like this:

• Create a tournament in our backend administration tool (web based, from my phone, computer or tablet)
  
  
• The day of the tournament, I set the tournament up in Tournament director, that is quickly done.
  
  
• I use Tournament Director for registering who plays, buyin, rebuy, reentry, addon and in the end, busts.
  If someone who wants to play has not paid the yearly membership fee, I get a notice about that.
  
  
• When the tournament is over, I export from Tournament director and upload the file to our backend. That takes less than 60 seconds.

Now, our webpage is updated with all facts about the tournament we just played, ranking is updated, leagues are updated and so on.
All this saves me a ton of time and we are no longer dependent on Facebook (not everyone has got a Facebook account too).

Our members find our webpage really useful, they can see their own statistics, tournaments (upcoming and past) and so much more.

Every quarter, we have a final and all players get extra chips depending on their ranking score for the last quarter. All this is configurable and saves me a ton of time.
In the tool, I just make the quarter final as a ranking tournament and the magic in the background does the work for me.

At the moment, we are adding some features like badges (win streak, or ITM streak and more), live reporting and some other good stuff…

Our webapp is fully responsive so we don't see a need to create a dedicated mobile app at the moment.

We are also looking into some other cool ideas that we would like to see peoples reactions on. This is a networking part of the poker club scene, we will get back to whoever wants to know more, when we are ready to present this part.

And yes, as some people already have figured out, we might also just do a more simple version of what Tournament Director does today, so you can skip that and only use our solution.

When it comes to forum rules, I am not sure if I can post the link to our landing page where you can show interest in this, so I won’t - until I get OK from admin to do it.
(I have this in mind ”…shall not post any referral links” and the bullet just after that one, since I am one of the guys behind this software)

Attached, a screenshot from part of my personal statistics as a player that all players can see (their personal stats, not mine)

View attachment 1326818


Translation on the some of the words in the screenshot:
Plats = What position I busted in
Pris = Money I won
Poäng = points
Utslagen av = The name of the fool who busted me
Totalt = Total
Snitt = Average
Turneringar = Number of tournaments
I ÅR = This Year
Rankingpoäng = Ranking points
Prisplacering = ITM
Vinstpengar = Money won

And to answer a question that you might have right now: Yes, this is made to support english mainly.

And I am sorry for my english not beeing perfect, but I guess you understand most of what I am writing

All the best!

What up, fellow swede! Always nice to see more of us finding their way here. Sounds like you have a good thing going. Where in Sweden are you based?

 

[Fiskfan]

What up, fellow swede! Always nice to see more of us finding their way here. Sounds like you have a good thing going. Where in Sweden are you based?

Hudiksvall. And you?

 

[HiveKueen]

I use TD to manage my play-weekly league (and envision using it for multiple leagues, possibly by the end of the year). I would pay double or triple for it than what Corey charges, but would be super turned off by subscription model pricing. The TD User Guide and forums are terrific resources for learning how to do things.

Disclaimer: I'm a former software engineer which I realize gives me a big leg up on using the tool.

I use it for: game, player and league management, league statistics, such as player points calculations, and publishing league standings html to the league website. I can use it to calculate gross/net winnings and points per play over any set of historical games I choose (though I only publish points based on seasons - if players knew their net winnings many would probably stop playing!).

Knowing what I know about its capabilities, I can't imagine there is a points calculation it can't do. If you can use spreadsheet you can definitely figure out how to do your calculation in TD!

I use email (with re-usable templates as can be created in Thunderbird; gmail account specific to the league, can check on my phone for incoming emails) and a website to communicate with league players - player registration, game announcements, who's playing the next game. I specifically don't use my phone (calls, texts) for this as it is too unmanege-able. Aside from email templates, an email address book and contacts in my phone I don't need any supplemental spreadsheets for anything.

Here are links to the league-branded pages on the league website that are created for me by the TD functionality (how cool are the sortable columns it creates!):

https://holdemhive.com/Standings.html

https://holdemhive.com/PPG.html

Here's the page I maintain to communicate who's playing the next game

https://holdemhive.com/RegisteredPlayers.html

We play 8 game seasons in my league with a championship for the top 8 point holders. Here's the page I use to communicate championship standings throughout the season.

https://holdemhive.com/ChampionshipStandings.html


If the tool afforded a phone based remote control I'd use it. But this feature would not be enough to get me to pay a subscription fee.

Again, the User Guide and Forums are valuable resources that I consult often.

My website is hosted at no cost to me at github which I learned to use by watching youtube videos. I pay a monthly fee for the holdemhive.com domain.

I welcome questions about how I use the tool and if the tool can do this or that. I am reluctant to answer "how to" questions given that that info can be involved and is readily available in the UG and user forums.


Kay

 

[Eriks]

Hudiksvall. And you?

Åkersberga, just outside of Stockholm

 

[Irish]

I use TD to manage my play-weekly league (and envision using it for multiple leagues, possibly by the end of the year). I would pay double or triple for it than what Corey charges, but would be super turned off by subscription model pricing. The TD User Guide and forums are terrific resources for learning how to do things.

Disclaimer: I'm a former software engineer which I realize gives me a big leg up on using the tool.

I use it for: game, player and league management, league statistics, such as player points calculations, and publishing league standings html to the league website. I can use it to calculate gross/net winnings and points per play over any set of historical games I choose (though I only publish points based on seasons - if players knew their net winnings many would probably stop playing!).

Knowing what I know about its capabilities, I can't imagine there is a points calculation it can't do. If you can use spreadsheet you can definitely figure out how to do your calculation in TD!

I use email (with re-usable templates as can be created in Thunderbird) and a website to communicate with league players - player registration, game announcements, who's playing the next game. I specifically don't use my phone (calls, texts) for this as it is too unmanege-able. Aside from email templates, an email address book and contacts in my phone I don't need any supplemental spreadsheets for anything.

Here are links to the league-branded pages on the league website that are created for me by the TD functionality (how cool are the sortable columns it creates!):

https://holdemhive.com/Standings.html

https://holdemhive.com/PPG.html

Here's the page I maintain to communicate who's playing the next game

https://holdemhive.com/RegisteredPlayers.html

We play 8 game seasons in my league with a championship for the top 8 point holders. Here's the page I use to communicate championship standings throughout the season.

https://holdemhive.com/RegisteredPlayers.html


If the tool afforded a phone based remote control I'd use it. But this feature would not be enough to get me to pay a subscription fee.

Again, the User Guide and Forums are valuable resources that I consult often.

My website is hosted at no cost to me at github which I learned to use by watching youtube videos. I pay a monthly fee for the holdemhive.com domain.

I welcome questions about how I use the tool and if the tool can do this or that. I am reluctant to answer "how to" questions given that that info can be involved and is readily available in the UG and user forums.


Kay

Nice use of the website functions! I figured TD had this capability, I just haven't had the chance to read through the forums and figure it out.

 

[HiveKueen]

Nice use of the website functions! I figured TD had this capability, I just haven't had the chance to read through the forums and figure it out.

I run stats and export to html. I have modified the html template that comes with TD so it uses my league colors and a custom heading. VERY easy.

 

[Rakrul]

Uh, so this has already been around for years. We're currently wrapping up season 19 now. I have every season in TD, but to show the current season standings I'm just using my WordPress site. I've been looking to automate it a bit but haven't had the motivation to do it.

Either way, there are already websites for this. I don't keep track of them any more, but these two are still operational it seems.
https://hsopv3.statsgenie.com/Default.aspx
https://homepokersystem.com/

 

[Irish]

I run stats and export to html. I have modified the html template that comes with TD so it uses my league colors and a custom heading. VERY easy.

Yep I use this feature for individual game results, just haven't incorporated the league information within TD yet, been too lazy busy to get around to it. Part of me was waiting for the next version to get released before looking at it, but I've waiting for like 4 years for that lol.

 

[drdr]

I haven't explored all TD is capable of. But one thing I don't care for is it's generally clunky interface, and the fact that you can't operate it remotely.

I operate TD remotely via Google Chrome Remote Desktop via an Android tablet remotely connected to PC.

 

[MrBoosh]

A customization I’m sure a few PCFers would like to see is

• Paulson/CPC edge spot and color customization for chip denom display
• Inlay image upload for chip demons
• Cross platform remote control
• Multi screen protection

Keep in mind I haven’t used TD so not sure if some of these options already exist

TD does allow you do upload your own chip pics if you wanted to. I do wish that I could control the knockouts and rebuys with an app. I do have a small handheld Bluetooth keyboard that I can use to control my computer from across the room if I chose to use it. Most of the time I am sitting near by my laptop so I just get up and make the changes as they happen. I also run multiple screens by using an hdmi splitter out of my laptop. I have an hdmi over ethernet adapter to run a screen out in my garage also when we have to set up an extra table.