Author Topic: I think this would be a great addition......  (Read 5186 times)

destadula

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I think this would be a great addition......
« on: September 11, 2010, 08:56:07 AM »
I am not really sure if this suggestion has been brought up, but I will pitch it anyway.

As the director of a tournament/league it is very time consuming to try and calculate how many will be attending the scheduled events. As it is now I use Texas Rank em to try and track who is in but this is time consuming.

Here is my suggestion, since I have everyone in my Tournament Director database with their emails, I would like to pitch the idea of being able to

1. Announce the tournament via email from the database in TD. I would click on a button the email all players in database announcing the tournament
2. Once the email is sent have a yes or no button on the email for the recipients to reply to.

This would save a ton of time as well as in my humble opinion add even more uniqueness to an already GREAT program.

It would save time in that when I deal with 70+ players in a tournament, if they were to get the announcement announcing the tournament via the program with a yes or no clickable response, I could have all the yes' in the tournament before hand and would just need to collect the monies and off to dealing the cards we go.


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Magic_fubu

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2010, 03:09:28 PM »
I agree in theory would be a good idea, but in my experiences, the league I run has a lot of older people who are hesitant/unsure about email, so it would be doubtful you would get 100% accuracy with it. Although I do agree it would be beneficial to have a RSVP with yes/no/maybe buttons.
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Corey Cooper

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2010, 03:25:33 PM »
Sounds like a great idea.  I see it in two parts: (1) ability to select users from the database and email them a tournament announcement/invitation/RSVP; and (2) the ability for the program to receive responses from those invitations and automatically add/remove appropriate players from the tournament (or have I inferred too much from your post?).

Well, in fact, I have considered part 1 before.  But let me tell you why I have decided against it.  First, while the software has taken on a lot of functionality beyond strictly running a poker tournament, this is another area where other software has already been there, done that, and works much better than I could ever hope to incorporate into the TD.  Should the TD have a sophisticated email editor built into it?  Will it send emails in plain text or HTML?  If HTML, do we build a fancy designer so the emails can look nice?  I'd much rather spend time working on other features than an email editor.  Then there's the problem of actually sending the emails.  Do you have your email server configuration information?  The TD will need that.  Many users already have a hard enough time setting up their home email clients, I don't want to add that frustration to the TD software.  But we could go another route: we could avoid using the user's email server, and have the software route email through the TD website email server.  That would avoid the configuration problem altogether.  Until same j@c#@$$ decides to use the software to route their spam emails.  Then the TD email server gets put on a major email server blacklist, and then every tournament invitation anyone sends using the TD gets routed to spam folders - everywhere.  Feature is now useless.

After brainstorming that nightmare, I decided to add only a simple feature: export email addresses, which can be done from the Players tab or the Database tab.  This will export names and email addresses to a file.  You can simply copy what is exported right into the "To:" line in any email and send something out to all of your players.

Of course, part (2) in your suggestion pretty much depends on part (1).

Thoughts?

jodybingo

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #3 on: September 12, 2010, 12:51:22 AM »
The only feature that interests me is being able to export e-mail addresses from the players database...

destadula

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2010, 10:02:59 AM »
COREY: Sounds like a great idea.  I see it in two parts: (1) ability to select users from the database and email them a tournament announcement/invitation/RSVP;

ANSWER: All is true with the exception of the RSVP part. I will answer the RSVP part with the second part of your response

COREY: and (2) the ability for the program to receive responses from those invitations and automatically add/remove appropriate players from the tournament (or have I inferred too much from your post?).

ANSWER: This is would be in my humble opinion overkill. I was thinking on the lines of when emailing from the database it could be just the basics of a txt formatted email to contain for example:
(Their Name) you have been invited to (name of club or organization) Poker Tournament
Date of Event
Cost
Venue
Yes   No   Maybe
Everything that is sent could be variable based and the yes no maybe can be they just hit reply and respond yes no or maybe. In no way would I want to have the responses automatically sent to the TD program because too many things change and people don’t show up and then I have more work.

COREY: Well, in fact, I have considered part 1 before.  But let me tell you why I have decided against it.  First, while the software has taken on a lot of functionality beyond strictly running a poker tournament, this is another area where other software has already been there, done that, and works much better than I could ever hope to incorporate into the TD.  Should the TD have a sophisticated email editor built into it?  Will it send emails in plain text or HTML?  If HTML, do we build a fancy designer so the emails can look nice?  I'd much rather spend time working on other features than an email editor.  Then there's the problem of actually sending the emails.  Do you have your email server configuration information? 

ANSWER: I say plain text emails. As far as the server config, most if not all are sitting on their own domains, so I would not think this would be all that big of an issue only because of what I stated above in that people would hit reply to commit or decline the invitation.

COREY: The TD will need that.  Many users already have a hard enough time setting up their home email clients, I don't want to add that frustration to the TD software. 

ANSWER: What I proposed it not a fit for everyone, I agree whole heartedly, but as an option or add-on for people who are handling large events, I think this would be an amazing time saving kick A$$ addition.

COREY: But we could go another route: we could avoid using the user's email server, and have the software route email through the TD website email server.  That would avoid the configuration problem altogether.  Until same j@c#@$$ decides to use the software to route their spam emails.  Then the TD email server gets put on a major email server blacklist, and then every tournament invitation anyone sends using the TD gets routed to spam folders - everywhere.  Feature is now useless

ANSWER: I agree 100% and that would be a bad solution that would do nothing but open you up to headaches.

COREY: After brainstorming that nightmare, I decided to add only a simple feature: export email addresses, which can be done from the Players tab or the Database tab.  This will export names and email addresses to a file.  You can simply copy what is exported right into the "To:" line in any email and send something out to all of your players.

Of course, part (2) in your suggestion pretty much depends on part (1).

ANSWER: As it is right now I use Rank em software to try to accomplish this task and it does it somewhat half baked and doesn’t always work. I have 171 players in our database and when the email goes out half get the email, the other half get blanks. I tried to purchase rights to the software from the developer but he was in fact way out of line (in my opinion) with his price.

I would be more than happy to give you admin permissions to the program to show you how it works if you like.
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Mahound

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« Reply #5 on: September 13, 2010, 09:32:46 AM »
I am only knew on here.  I have ran a few tournaments with the TD.  I have tried many ways to inform and invite people to tournaments. But find it hard to get people to commit, as very few read display posters, and very few answer e mails

So for invites to a tournament I now use face book. I create an event and send out invites to interested friends only. In this i can tell them ,what, where, when, and what the cost will be.
 
As you say, people are reluctant to commit early on. However i find that inviting people this way, creates an interest. I can update people with the numbers signed up,  and as it starts to fill up you will find that people will not want to miss out and will commit themselves to the tournament.

You can also inform people of the schedules , blinds, levels etc. You can find out what structures they want to play. And as the numbers increase i will always update the prospective prize pool. Because nothing drags people in quicker than seeing a 4 figure prize pool.

Afer the game i can publish the results to all players and any wavering potential players, i can also get feedback, as to how the game went, what was wrong and  what can be done to make it better
« Last Edit: September 13, 2010, 09:49:05 AM by Mahound »

destadula

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #6 on: September 13, 2010, 10:19:40 AM »
While I do agree somewhat with parts of your post, the underlying request or for that matter for posting the idea is that there are many of us that run rather large tournaments.

Posting information on facebook in my himble opinion is not a viable nor good idea as Facebook does not delete information off their server backups and most people including myself do not want any of my information published in that manner. It is no ones business what I am doing and when.

When have a totally secure area of our site that has every months tournament results as well as players, pot size, payouts, finishing order, ytd monies won or lost and so on.

This suggestion is to try and eliminate steps in running a large tournament and at the same time either as an addon or as an option to the program to make it even easier for me rather than to be going to one program to do this and another to do that.

This suggestion would not affect 50% of the people who use TD, but the 50% it would, well they would be extremely thankful.
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Karpro

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2010, 09:14:53 PM »
statsgenie.com handles this part of running a tournament very well

Buddymax

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2010, 03:36:13 AM »
I recently set up a tournament invite through a website called www.eventbrite.com.  I found this site to be very helpful and easy to setup if you are collecting at the door.  It provides space for the tournament information and allows for setting the number of available seats and each participant that registers gets a confirmation e-mail with a PDF "ticket" that they print and bring with them to prove that they are registered for the tournament. 

You must show the ticket as a "Free Ticket" in the setup but in your event details indicate that the entry fee is $XX.00 payable at the door, otherwise there will be a fee charged by eventbrite for each ticket sold

You can sell the tickets online for a fee and they have paypal, MC and Visa options, which also have their fees so it can get pricey.


Buddymax

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2010, 03:38:57 AM »
continued.....
The problem with sales at the door is that you may have some people who register and then dont attend as  they do nto have a cost commitment.  You might want to set a time for pickup at leat 1/2 hour before start.  If they dont show up by that time they forfeit and you can sell to others who enter at the door.

Good Luck

luigy22

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2011, 01:09:43 PM »
This is a different suggestion as the one above.

I ran a weekly tourney for our league, we have 1-2-3 seasons a year, it all depends, but they last an average of 3-4 months.
It would be great for somehow have TD to show screen messages using data store from current/previous seasons/leagues.
For example, player A has never won a tournament this 2011, player B has always reached final table this season, player A has taken out player B 14 times since 2010, player C needs X points to reach "suggested final tourney" remaining X tourneys this season.
There are many options.

Magic_fubu

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2011, 01:29:07 PM »
This is a different suggestion as the one above.

I ran a weekly tourney for our league, we have 1-2-3 seasons a year, it all depends, but they last an average of 3-4 months.
It would be great for somehow have TD to show screen messages using data store from current/previous seasons/leagues.
For example, player A has never won a tournament this 2011, player B has always reached final table this season, player A has taken out player B 14 times since 2010, player C needs X points to reach "suggested final tourney" remaining X tourneys this season.
There are many options.

I second that, but I would almost say for the "suggested final tourney" idea would be the most difficult for Corey to implement. But, if there were a way to state something like "suppose this player scores X points per tourney the rest of the season. How many points does player A need in the remaining tournaments to presumably overtake the first player?", then it might be more implementable.
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wanabe

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Re: I think this would be a great addition......
« Reply #12 on: August 16, 2011, 09:11:51 PM »
i handle thisby exporting phone numbers to excel
and using a mass text software ....DRPU BULK SMS for android ....

I connect my android to the computer and inport the excel file
works perfedt!!!!!