Run Your Home Game

Any tech savvy Players/Home Game runners that would be willing to help test out my software (for fun) in the near future. I run a software engineering dept as my day job for many years and although my front end skills are rusty AF (meaning I was decent in VB6 and .Net 15-20 years ago) I am very solid in Database so I had the backend for years. With AI advancing and work pushing us to learn the ins and outs they said go crazy and do whatever home project to learn and test. So here I am with an over engineered poker app.

There is absolutely no expectations here, in 2 days I might just be done and end it or you might just say hey I got busy don't have time anymore. There is also no expectation of data privacy in fact I will be looking on purpose to see if things are working as intended. I really have no idea what my intentions are for this other then using it myself (+ a few friends) and having fun. But I did wind up doing a few things this community loves to talk about. Here is what the app intends to do (does it really, who knows).

Player Section is all about Session Management for the individual

Club section is running a game

Invite Management

Club Management

Member Management

Event Management (clock still under construction)

Blinds Structure

Payout Structure

Chipset Config

Admin section is for me ... config and tools to run the app

This is basically all the stuff I have been doing manually for 20 years but in an app --- diarrhea of my poker mind if you will

FYI I found some unique ways to do Invite management without Twilio or a service (small 1 time fee needed I think it was 5 bucks)

Anyway this is constantly changing as I see fit but if anyone interested in giving honest feedback and passing issues off to me then hit me up. Even if the feedback is man this sucks, I don't care it will not hurt my feelings. Like I said this was intended for me and me alone but I got crazy on the engineering side so who the eff knows where it goes. FYI this pilot will be very small as this is not hosted or anything just me playing around. If I have a choice I am way more likely to give a login to trusted forum members I recognize from the 12 years I have been on PCF, and if not then maybe just chat about ideas here which is cool as well.

Also note I have gone through 10 names already and I do not know what to call it, every time I try a name I find out later it is in use so I move on. Name may just be a place holder.

A few screenshots (pages are mobile friendly as well)

Tagging a few of my homies. @Al Azouri (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/1867/) @GetUrShineBox (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/8076/) @seyff45 (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/475/)

Always happy to chat about more ideas,

ChipTalker

Having a lot of fun creating caricature profile pics for demo data :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:

I made some data up like Grama has no first/last name in the credits I don't think.

This is how my GameNight Project began... I only wanted a method to send and receive SMS texts for game invitations... It took on a life of its own!

I like how you used the left-hand menu.

I found an interesting way to send SMS without a service if you are interested we can compare notes. When I have time I will DL Game Night but don't want to be influenced just yet. @Al Azouri (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/1867/) who is a good friend of mine and created this https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/invitetracker.89110/ uses those services like twilio and I always noticed people have issues out of their control from 3rd parties so was trying to skip that if possible or at least come up with an alternative.

BTW @Isorg (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/21379/) to be up front I have written precisely 0 lines of code, never even looked at, all AI i just direct.

FYI I found some unique ways to do Invite management without Twilio or a service (small 1 time fee needed I think it was 5 bucks)

Curious what you are using?

For SMTP I started with Twillio, but didn't want to really spend the $$, moved to google workspace but, found a limit of 150 a day for new accounts and it could take months to unlock the full send abilities. I am using Brevo now, since I seem to easily fit into their free tier!

SMS, now this was the holy grail for me, I wanted 2 way SMS. I wanted the users to be able to reply straight to the SMS and acknowledge the invite. you need a 10dlc to be able to send sms like this. Started with Twilio, and tried a few others, but was having issues with the 10dlc process. The guys over at surge.app were very helpful and got me working for a very low cost $5/month give me 2 way SMS. FYI, you can't send a 10dlc messge to a url with .poker in it! LOL

Whats app, was almost an after thought :)

BTW @Isorg (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/21379/) to be up front I have written precisely 0 lines of code, never even looked at, all AI i just direct.

Trust me! I know! I am a system admin / Dev my self, I only dabble in code. Using AI is a force multiplayer!

oh this is not 2 way this is just sending out SMS so far ... I have 2 methods working. Easy approach: press the button while on the phone and it creates a message in the default app and brings it up ... you then press send so ... it appears to come from you. This works for some cases but couldn’t carry a JWT token for SSO back in, so I do almost the same thing except 1 at a time with the token and instead of the user pressing send it’s automated via Tasker on the phone. There’s a cost for Tasker which is 1 time under 5 bucks. Both approaches have been fine for me so far and I like that they appear to come from you.

created a few tags to simplify sending more elaborate messages

Curious what you are using?

For SMTP I started with Twillio, but didn't want to really spend the $$, moved to google workspace but, found a limit of 150 a day for new accounts and it could take months to unlock the full send abilities. I am using Brevo now, since I seem to easily fit into their free tier!

SMS, now this was the holy grail for me, I wanted 2 way SMS. I wanted the users to be able to reply straight to the SMS and acknowledge the invite. you need a 10dlc to be able to send sms like this. Started with Twilio, and tried a few others, but was having issues with the 10dlc process. The guys over at surge.app were very helpful and got me working for a very low cost $5/month give me 2 way SMS. FYI, you can't send a 10dlc messge to a url with .poker in it! LOL

Whats app, was almost an after thought :)

Did you have any success with twilio? When I tried they told me they couldn’t authorize a campaign bc it was poker related, even though it was just to give updates about a poker game

Did you have any success with twilio? When I tried they told me they couldn’t authorize a campaign bc it was poker related, even though it was just to give updates about a poker game

Correct... cant do a 10dlc if poker is mentioned.

I used Surge.app to get my 10dlc that i use for gamenight.

Read this here (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/gamenight-you-in-no-longer-just-an-invite-tracker.142193/page-2#post-2891721), I posted my details on how I got my 10dlc. Please note that at the time when I got my 10 DLC, the URL was still https://gamenight.isorg.com (https://gamenight.isorg.com/). When I moved the URL to https://gamenight.poker (https://gamenight.poker/), every time I send out a URL using the SMS, I use a URL shortener to get around the "poker" ban.

I am just using automation to bypass any paid service at all. It requires using Tasker on your phone but once setup I have never touched it and been working for months now without issues on Android. I think @Al Azouri (https://www.pokerchipforum.com/members/1867/) figured out a way to do it on IPhone as well.

Correct... can't do a 10dlc if poker is mentioned.

This may be irrelevant to you if you've already found another route, but Twilio will register a 10DLC — even when poker is referenced. We learned we had to be VERY explicit about what the service was NOT (no real gaming or money transfers). The brand approval was straightforward, while the campaign application required adjustments, including our ToS and Privacy wording. Glad to help if you have further questions.

I went a different path on the SMS, since Twillo was a bit too expensive and you couldn't get Norwegian numbers without paying and arm and a leg. We also have a PMavens server where I wanted people to get SMS on when tournaments registration opened, started, finished, as well as cash games starting, etc.

So in March '22 I bought a license here: https://codecanyon.net/item/sms-gateway/21419519 which is lifetime with free upgrades. I also bought a dirt cheap Android phone (make sure it can run Android 6.0 or higher which shouldn't be a problem these days) and the cheapest subscription I could find with unlimited texts ($7/month). You need to sideload an APK on the phone. I already had a web-server running LAMP which is the API between PMavens and the Android phone. All software is provided in the package from the link above, but you need to modify the code for your PMavens API. Both are in PHP, and I've never coded in PHP but made it work so it's not hard. With AI I imagine it's even easier.

So here's how it works: PMavens server sends a Callback Event to my Linux server, this triggers some API calls, both back to PMavens server (to get the player's balance, etc) and to the Android phone to send the text. Users can also reply and register for tournaments through SMS and they also get texts when they're first in line on waiting list, when they get a seat, they can inquire status about cash games running, etc.

Enjoy watching everyone's inventive takes on these solutions.

Interesting approach. Likely more than I require.

But VB6 and legacy .NET are quite familiar to me...

The possibilities with AI are genuinely astonishing.

LOL I am an old VB6 programmer as well however all the stuff I had Claude do is a React frontend. It works pretty well although I never fully tested things like the clock yet in a real tourney.

The software looks nice. It is interesting to read the ways you guys have figured out to send sms. I am a landlord and I have tried a few times to develop something or a cheap service that would let me send out to groups of tenants instead of copying and paying messages one by one. I haven't found a good solution still. I will look into the things you guys mentioned.

I also made software in claude that basically pulls together multiple spreadsheets that I have been using to track my re portfolio, leases, loans, etc.. it allows forecasting of the entire portfolio, individual properties, can run reports, track net worth and project it, etc.. it is an html file now but I will have claude code it in react and I have a website already. Planning to try to sell subscriptions to use it.

I have almost zero coding experience. It is amazing what claude can do.