TourneyTracks.com launched earlier this month, and word is spreading from player to player at the tables. The site tracks upcoming tournaments in North America, including any single tournament with an entry fee over $1,000 and any series containing more than three events with buy-ins over $200.
In the past, touring tournament pros and amateurs looking to find a series to play had to check CardPlayer’s tournament list, Bluff Magazine’s list, the sites of casinos in California and Nevada, and leaf through a few print magazines in hopes of finding the right tournament series. Tourney Tracks fixes that problem and has already saved me some time. The list includes a number of tournaments I would never have known about, and will certainly grow as poker rooms realize that being on the site can help them get players to their tournaments.
With the launch of TourneyTracks.com, being a tournament poker player just got easier. The front page tournament listings start with the tournaments that are happening right now and scrolling through the list allows the reader to see future tournaments and plan trips well ahead of time.
The appearance of the site on a mobile device is particularly impressive. On both iPhone and Android, the mobile version very easy to use. Many sites have mobile versions, but suffer from an overly complicated mobile design that is tough to read quickly on a small screen. Tourney Tracks appears as a simple linear scroll with bold lettering giving the location, date and name of each tournament series starting with the soonest.
Tours like the Heartland Poker Tour and Canadian Poker Tour that are overlooked on other lists are represented on Tourney Tracks, as well as single tournaments that might be missed on the magazine sites. I talked to the founders of the site and found out about plans for future expansion as well.
BLIND STRADDLE: The site looks great as it is, simple and easy to use. Are there plans to add more features and grow or is this it?
TOURNEY TRACKS: We have lots of plans, maybe more ambition than we have time for. We’d like to expand to cover tournaments across the globe, add travel information from a major travel site, deals from hotels and airlines, ride and hotel share information, entertainment in the area around each tournament, and forums for players to find backing and sell shares of themselves. Eventually we may move into listing all of the regular tournaments at major card rooms, but that will be a big job. For now we’re very happy with the functionality of the site and we don’t want to compromise that by adding more information than we can organize with the current format.
BS: I love the Google map features you’ve integrated into the site. Are you doing more with that?
TT: We’re continually looking into how we can leverage current technologies into making tournament players lives easier. The Google stuff was very easy to integrate, and I think we’ve just scratched the surface of what we can do with it. Helps that it’s free, too.
BS: What prompted you to create the site?
TT: We were online poker players and since Black Friday we’ve been traveling a lot more to play. It sucks to go somewhere and hear about a tournament happening a few hundred miles away that you’d rather be playing, so we essentially created the site for ourselves and people like us. If we have a problem finding all the tournaments we want to play, then other people must be having the same problem and there might be a real market there.
BS: How is traffic so far?
TT: It’s very early, but the response has been much better than we expected. Traffic is increasing very quickly and word is spreading. With each new series more and more players seem to be telling each other about the site and people are talking about it on forums as well. We even did an interview for a print magazine last week that will be out in a month or two. Overall it’s going great.
BS: Is this a labor of love or do you hope to make a living from the site some day?
TT: A little of both. We do love tournament poker—we’re our own target market! So having the site up just for ourselves and our friends is nice, but we’d also like to make some money from it considering how much work we’ve put into it. We’re not sure where the income would come from, but the way the site is growing in terms of traffic there will probably be some income from it. We’ve been contacted by a few card rooms who want to promote their tournaments on the site, so we may make a few dollars next month, but we aren’t going to get rich from it right away and that’s fine with us.
BS: Well, good luck. I’m going to Tourney Tracks and go plan a trip right now.