With your permission... (From July 2005. Edit/MH.)

[Grummin]

(Edit/MH: See Update 2006. MH/060106.)

*

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Douglas and I am a poker site designer. Please, put down the fruit and eggs, I'm not here to sell our site...yet. I've been a video game design for some time (shipped around a 1/2 dozen titles for major publishers). As luck would have it, I joined up with a company that decided they'd like to use the expertise they have internally to construct a poker site.

I'm going to be sparse with the details about the site for now, simply because we're not ready to go public. The reason I'm here is, as a designer, it's my duty to gather feedback from other users other than myself and see what they like/dislike about their gameplay today.

We've played poker and studied the industry for the past year. Each one of the engines that powers all of the sites our there is on my PC and I've played them all and found them wanting. I've seen ZeroRake flame and die out, Full Tilt come out strong and Noble Poker turn some heads. Small sites like Tropics Poker attempt to grow with little to show for it and Planet Poker undergo a much needed facelift.

I've been lurking for a few days and I appreciate the level of discussion here. I hope in the days and weeks to come that I may occasionally run ideas by you folks, the players, about what features/tools/troubles you'd appreciate seeing cleared up by a new site.

Our team already has their launch planned out and we're marching towards it with the plan I've laid out with the team's input, but it's not too late for some features. We of course will be running a beta once we're live and I'll make sure that some swag is sent out to the helpful when able. But at this point, I simply wanted to request your permission to join the conversation and run a few ideas up the flagpole from time to time.

Thank you for your time,
Douglas 'Grummin'