Best free software for managing home games/tourneys? (1 Viewer)

Nex said:
Dr. Neau tournament manager seems like it is abandonware now?
Click to expand...

@Dr. Neau?

He used to have his home league web page available with a function that kicked out DRNTM points (the same formula we adopted). It was great for checking results that seemed odd. That was gone a year or so ago when I looked for it.

He has probably created a new formula for people to argue over...

We've been using Blind Valet over TD lately. It's nice that the host can control the clock from his phone...
 
Few months ago I contacted the author of Dr. Neau and he sent me a valid basic license.
You shall try to contact him by mail.

"Abandonware" has no legal meaning by the way and it's a term used on the net by some who wants to legitimate piracy.
 
WedgeRock said:
@Dr. Neau?

He used to have his home league web page available with a function that kicked out DRNTM points (the same formula we adopted). It was great for checking results that seemed odd. That was gone a year or so ago when I looked for it.

He has probably created a new formula for people to argue over...
Click to expand...
I thought he had an account here and posted just last year?
 
I don't care who else uses the term, and the legal meaning doesn't matter to me either.

Abandonware, to me, is simply software which was abandoned by its developer. If you're very lucky it stays in a working state; usually though you are left with things that stop working. In any case however you're pretty much screwed if you need any support, and you'll die of old age before you'll get any feature or bugfix you might be waiting on.

I.e. not worth even trying to get into, as you're almost guaranteed to hit a stone wall at some point which you simply won't be able to get over.
 
The home page pack from Blind valet should fit for most, or even the free one if you only do 1 table. The guy is friendly and adds new features frequently (I recently got him to add BB/button ante). One of the biggest pros for me, is that my players can login on their own devices to check the blind levels, clock, payout etc, as everything is synchronized in real-time. You can also allow them to register themselves to the tournaments there.
 
Max D said:
On Mac i use Dr Neau. You can manage any aspect of the game, and there used to be a free version if you stayed under a certain number of players. My version is ancient , so I don’t know if they still have a free version you can use. @Dr. Neau is on the forum too.
http://drneau.com/
Click to expand...

I also use the very old free version of Dr Neau!
The subscription charge for the new version is a bit steep for me since I only run 3 or so tourneys a year. The old version runs on JAVA PC and Linux (and MAC I guess).
 
Abandonware? Heck no. "Coastware" maybe (just taking orders for last 5 years with no new enhancements)

I just haven't been here in a while...and apparently tagging me serves no purpose cuz I didn't get a notification.

@WedgeRock: Yeah, that formula calculator was on my old league page. I'm actually kinda surprised I don't have that calculator on drneau.com.
 
Nex said:
Dr. Neau tournament manager seems like it is abandonware now?

Last release that is offered for download on the website is from April 2012, his forum is flooded with spam, and after like a full page of spam threads I find *two* legit threads from people which went like "hey, I sent payment for a license a week ago, nothing here yet, what's up?" and zero replies on them.

Extremely bad market situation apparently.

Mobile-only apps are not even worth a consideration for me, they are too inflexible, and the other crap is hosted in the cloud. Subscription-only is already bad enough, but combined with not having control over the installation (their servers could go down/be taken offline any day, even before your subscription period ends) AND also giving your (and your buddies') data away to third parties, those are also out of consideration. The thing from Dr Neau had the big appeal that it was Java-based, hence cross-platform, and running on your local machine(s).

Leaves only three other desktop applications I found with a quick Google search... all Windows-only, all looking fairly dated, one even so extremely ancient that the website shows screenshots that appear to be made with Windows 98.

Smells like a market niche is open here. I'm a software developer and probably already have most of the skills/knowledge on the technical side to be able to build something good, but I'm not sure if sacrificing a big chunk of my free time over a considerable amount of time to work on a solid, modern and fair solution would really pay off. Not sure if maybe most tournament hosts just don't give a shit about the drawbacks and are happy with the relatively up-to-date third-party hosted solutions.
Click to expand...

Not enhanced since 2012, but still available. I just reached a point where it felt like I was trying too hard to find new enhancements to justify a new release. It already did everything I needed it to do, so why change it.

The forum: Traffic dropped to nearly zero and spam took over. Cleaning it became too much of a chore and I didn't want to go through the effort of updating the forum to a new version. I should probably just kill the forum.
 
Even the web isn't working. I logged in and couldn't find any way to create a tourney.
 
Can someone get me a screenshot on how to do it because I can't figure it out.
 
moose said:
Can someone get me a screenshot on how to do it because I can't figure it out.
Click to expand...

After you create an account and log in, what do you see? I see the following:

bv_main.png


I click on "+ Tournament" to create a tournament. Enter a few settings and then it's up and running
bv2.png
 

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