40 000th poker player on PokerDIY – A brief history

PokerDIY started out in life in 2005 as a website for a small group of friends who got together every Wednesday for a home poker game.

Roll on 3 and a half years later and we have just had our 40 000th poker player sign up for their free account on PokerDIY!

This is great news – our community of poker players is growing at a astonishing rate – let’s take a look at some milestones and you can see why PokerDIY is more than just another poker social network:

• November 2005 – PokerDIY Founded.

The idea for PokerDIY came about due to the lack of a satisfactory service to manage a local home poker league. League host Rodney Joyce spent way too much time trying to organize poker games, manage replies, email results and find players to fill seats so he started a small website for his poker mates where he could schedule upcoming poker games, upload game results and discuss tourneys/tactics. It proves to be an instant hit and visitors to the site start asking if they can do the same for their own home poker games. PokerDIY is officially launched!

• November 2005 – First Poker League managed on PokerDIY

The first poker league to use PokerDIY to the max was the London Home Poker League. Consisting of a group of around 40 league members, events are scheduled and league scores are tracked. Everyone agrees that PokerDIY makes life a lot easier!

• March 2006 – Move to new, bigger servers to cope with growth

PokerDIY switches to dedicated hosting to handle the growth in traffic and load on the website.

• August 2006 – Poker Videos and Poker Gallery section

Due to popular request we launch our poker video and poker gallery section. The poker babes become an immediate hit! Users start sharing poker vids and pics of their home games.

• September 2006 – First PokerDIY Freeroll League Event

We start running our regular PokerDIY -sponsored freeroll events to thank our loyal users. Winner gets $100 and it’s free to play!

• February 2007 – PokerDIY starts ranking #1 in Google

PokerDIY starts ranking well for all sorts of “home poker” terms that a person might type in. This was a major achievement for us as the web started to recognize us as a major player in this space.

• June 2007 – Integration with The Tournament Director

Import your poker league results from desktop poker league software suite The Tournament Director. Publish your poker league results to your online scoreboard with a single click.

• November 2007 – Sign into PokerDIY with your OpenID or LiveID

If you have a LiveID or OpenID you can now sign into PokerDIY using that.

• February 2008 – Find Poker Players by Location section

We added a new way of searching for fellow poker players in your area with our Find by Location section. Drill down by Country, Region and City to connect with other poker players.

• March 2008 – PokerDIY Redesign #1

The first major overhaul of PokerDIY was done to bring the key components to the attention of visitors and make the site easier to navigate.

• June 2008 – 7000th Poker Game Ad listed

The 7000th home poker game ad is posted in our Find Local Poker Games section.

• July 2008 – Integration with Simple Tourney Manager

PokerDIY now integrates with popular poker league management software Simple Tourney

• August 2008 – 500th Poker League started on PokerDIY

The 500th poker league on PokerDIY is started!

• September 2008 – 500th Poker Group is created on PokerDIY

The 500th poker group is created on PokerDIY.

• September 2008 – First Poker Widget – Poker League Profile Scores

You can now show your poker profile league scores on your own website/blog/Facebook account using our Poker Widgets.

• November 2008 – PokerDIY breaks into the Alexa Top 100k Websites

Thanks to all the new features PokerDIY starts to pick up speed and cracks the elusive Alexa 100k Traffic rankings. We get around 1500 poker players visiting PokerDIY daily.

• December 2008 – Google Poker Map launched

Find poker leagues, poker players, poker groups, local poker games and events on our interactive Google Poker Map. Just one more way of helping connect our poker players.

• January 2009 – Integration with Dr Neau’s Tournament Manager

You can now import your poker tourneys from Dr Neau’s Tournament Manager version 3 and publish your league results on PokerDIY.

• March 2009 – Facebook Integration – Log onto PokerDIY with your Facebook details

Sick and tired of having to remember login details on different sites? Sign into PokerDIY with your Facebook login details using Facebook Connect.

• May 2009 – PokerDIY Redesign #2

PokerDIY moves with the times and focuses on XHTML and usability. Quick loading pages and more efficient navigation is what it’s all about.

• July 2009 – PokerDIY Mobile Launched – Manage your Poker League on your iPhone/Mobile

Here is the first poker game that was scored from the poker table using a iPhone mobile.

• July 2009 – Get your own name/URL on your PokerDIY Profile

Keeping up with Jones (or Facebook in this case!), you can now have your very own profile URL to identify your Poker Player Profile.

• July 2009 – 40 000th Poker Player Joins

Today we reached a new landmark when our 40 000th player joined PokerDIY.

• The Future – What’s Next?

This is up to you – please help us by letting us know how we can make our free service better and more helpful! We want to make poker league management as simple as it should be!

Some of the things we are working on late at night:

• Expect to see PokerDIY Mobile become more and more useful.
• Improvements to the poker league system.
• Player performance reports and charts.
• Better reporting on Hitmen, winnings, averages and other statistics.
• More Facebook integration, Twitter integration and much more!

Thanks for being a part of it…