Dr. Neau's Tournament Manager

Dr. Neau's Tournament Manager automates virtually every aspect of a poker tournament for you.

Blinds Schedule management - Create your blinds schedule using the blinds schedule wizard (or design your own blind schedule...or use one of the built-in schedules.) Schedules include three types of segments (pre-tournament countdown, general play and break).  For each segment, you can specify the duration, which add-ons are available, which rebuys are available, which chips need to be traded in and whether or not the timer should pause at the end of the segment. For play segments, you can additionally track the limit type, ante, small blind and large blind. Finally, the main console displays a console specific to the currently active segment. Blinds schedules can be imported from/exported to a resource file or imported from another tournament.

Financial management - You have complete financial control over your tournament. First, you can now specify multiple types of buy-ins, rebuys and add-ons for your tournament (although, you'll typically just define at most one of each). For each buy-in, rebuy and add-on type, you define the total cost, the chips received and the house rake. For add-ons and rebuys, you specify whether or not they are limited and what the limit is. You can specify a general bounty that applies to every player as well as an additional bounty on specific players. You can specify a fixed overall rake for the entire prize pool, set aside a certain amount of the prize pool for special awards (like best hand of the tournament) and specify any amount that you are throwing into the pool (if you are a very generous host). For payouts, you can define a tiered payout schedule (i.e. 1-10 buy-ins pays 2 spots, 11-20 pays 3, etc.).  For each tier, the number of places to pay can be entered manually by you or calculated from the number of buy-ins.  Pool percentages over the paid spots can be entered manually by you or you can use one of the built-in formulas (like I do) to automatically distribute the percentages in a fair and consistent manner regardless of how many people buy-in. You can specify fixed amounts or other prizes (like "New Car") to specific spots in the payout schedule. There is also a player summary screen which show ALL up-to-date financial data for every player. Finally, the main console can display many different types of financial information (highlights include vertically and horizontally scrolling widgets). Financial settings can be imported from/exported to a resource file or imported from another tournament.

Seating management - Using the seating manager, you enter your table names and seats per table, then let the tool go to work. Have it automatically seat all players randomly (or you pick their seats) and pick the initial dealer. Display your seating on the main console when you need it. As you eliminate players, it will watch for table balancing and consolidation opportunities (based on parameters you specify). As opportunities are found, it will prompt you and offer to reseat people automatically...then notify you what it did.

Chip management - Use the chip manager to manage everything about your chips. Once you enter the information on your chips (colors, values, quantities and designs), you can use the application to calculate an initial chip distribution. The application can also then dynamically calculate when it's time to chip up and automatically update your blinds schedule accordingly. Finally, chip values and their colors/designs can be displayed on the main console for all players to see.

League statistics  - Once you've run a few tournaments, you can use the league rankings portion of the tool to rank your players using one of the built-in formulas (or a formula you've designed!)  You can also filter out players who haven't played in enough tournaments to qualify in your rankings system. Rankings information can be exported to HTML or pasted into MS Excel.

Updates to players during play -  All critical information that players need during a tournament is displayed on the main console (great for projecting onto a wall). Best of all, the main console is completely configurable. You choose from over 30 different components you want to see, including active chip count, active level name, active seat count, active table count, add-on count, ante, ante/blinds, average chip stack, blinds, buy-in count, chip case, chip consolidation recommendation, deck color, generic label, large blind, limit type, next level summary, occupied seat count, payouts/results (vertically scrolling), payouts/results (horizontally scrolling), previous level summary, prize pool, rebuy count, remaining player count, small blind, time in round, time of day, time of end of tournament, time to next break, tournament description and tournament title. You configure them to your heart's content and save your configured consoles into a resource file. Alerts can fire depending on certain events (such as "player eliminated"). Each alert can have an audio associated with it (choose from one of the several built-in audios or references your own). Each alert can also display a large message on the main console, (such as "Dr. Neau has won the tournament"). Finally, consoles can be displayed to remote client systems (regardless of their OS)...and unlike other tools, the audios will play on all systems even if you don't have a network drive mapped.

A complete history of action - All important events (buy-ins, add-ons, rebuys, eliminations, tournament start & end) are stored in a history log that can be referenced at any time. If you accidentally perform an action you did not intend (like you eliminated the wrong player), you can just delete the event or edit it. The tool will ensure that you don't do anything to the event log to leave it in an invalid state (such as removing a buy-in for a player that someone has eliminated).

A tournament checklist - Design your own reusable checklist to make sure you don't forget anything. You can check items as "complete", add help details to the note (like "I got the chairs at Sam's Club"), or notes to the items as your work on them (like "Steve didn't show up again...don't invite him next time").

A hand timer - Put your players on the clock using the hand timer. It will give visual and audio alerts as it nears the end and expires.

Online documentation - The tool has built-in hyper-linked documentation available from the help menu. In the documentation, you'll find a quick start guide, a poker glossary, an application glossary, an index, information on getting support, information on donating to Dr. Neau, up-to-date releases notes (with known outstanding issues, recent enhancements and planned enhancements) and links to useful poker sites. The documentation continues to expand as I have time.

Runs on Windows

Processor - 400MHz minimum recommended

Video - 1024x768 minimum recommended

Access to these extended features is available for a small fee that should be a drop in the bucket for anyone.

Your fee can be paid via one of four methods...

Please note:

• All payments are non-refundable.
• Please note: If you don't hear from me within 2 days of making your first payment, please send an email to orders@drneau.com with your PayPal order number.  I've run into a few situations where email from my ISP has been marked as "spam".

1. Quarterly subscription
Use PayPal to setup a recurring quarterly payment of $10/quarter.

2. Purchase service in 3 month blocks
Use PayPal to purchase service in a non-automatically-recurring way. Same rate as the recurring payment, except you control when you pay and how much you buy.

3. "Donation" in any amount
Make a payment in any amount you choose. Your payment will be applied using the current quarterly rates.

4. Personal check
Don't like PayPal? Send email to orders@drneau.com to find out where to send a check.

Extended features currently include:

• Managing more than 12 players
• Managing more than 2 tables
• Saving & loading customized consoles
• Saving & loading leagues
• Using the client/server capabilities

"This is by far the best tournament          software I have used. I have read the target market for this is small home tournaments but let me tell you in my opinion this is perfect for someone like me running large 150 -200 person tournaments." - Terr on 7/6/2005

"...everyone had a great time and said the tournament was run like a top notch game. They all said the software program made it all work out. I want to thank you for a great product." - abhunter on 6/22/2005

"But best part is that the whining, bitching that used to go on is now gone." - blockhead on 2/16/2005

"This is one of the neatest programs that I have used for organizing the guys poker night at the house. Dr. Neau has used his "skee-ill" to put together a well thought out program." - Scraped from someone's blog on the internet on 2/26/2005

"This is by far the most complete and customizable tournament manager software that I had the chance to stumble across." - Martin on 2/27/2005

"I finally got to take the software on two live runs through actual tournaments this weekend, and it worked great.  Took a lot of the the grunt work out of the game and let us enjoy the poker that much more. Many thanks for all your effort; I wish some of these large software companies could see what can be done with a little time and effort and focus on the product, rather than the profit.  I appreciate the chance to try it out.  If this ever does grow into something you could profit from, I wish you all the luck." - Bard on 2/22/2005

"Jeff:  We used Tournament Manager ("TM") for our 11th annual [tournament] last night.  Although we employ a rather unique combined limit/no-limit structure for a 7-card stud tournament, TM did an admirable job of managing our tournament.  Thought you might enjoy seeing the fruits of your labor in action.  The attached photo shows the winners of GBPT 2005 with TM displayed in the background." - Gooty Brother on 2/20/2005

"You’re doing a great job developing this…..I have looked at other programs that cost in the $60 to $70 range that don’t have some of these features..." - from Jack on 1/30/2005.

"I and all the guys in our tournaments love your software. We just started having tournaments and were concerned about how everyone would act. Some people get pissed off over the smallest thing (especially if they lose). By using your software, all the main decisions like who sits where, when the blinds change, keeping track of the finishing order, and so on, were made by the computer. No one got upset or angry and everything was great. Having your software has guaranteed that I will be invited to every tournament around. I sent you some money. I wished I could pay more. I am glad you took the time to work on this software and I am very glad you share it with others." - from Bruce on January 26th, 2005

"This program is awesome!...This program will make a lot of people happy..." - from "Mr. BJC" on July 12th, 2004

"I wanted to let you know that I used the TM on the Mac on Saturday night...everything worked perfectly and it was a lot of fun for the table." - from "Jamaican Pete" on July 26th, 2004

"I really like your tournament manager. I think it will add that little bit of class I need to pull this first time event off." - from "Mr. Mooney" on July 28th, 2004

"I'm a regular at a couple of online poker forums, and every so often people post requests for recommendations for this type of software - Tournament Director seems to be the most commonly mentioned program. I've looked at it and I think yours is better. Would it be ok for me to refer people to Tournament Manager?" - from "Jamaican Pete" on August 12th, 2004

"It is really a great program." - from "Mr. Princeton" on August 13th, 2004

"Thanks for a great product and your time and effort" - from "Mickey C" on August 16th, 2004

"I can't thank you enough for all your hard work. I've sent [a payment] via paypal. I would have sent more, but I was knocked out 7th in the tournament Friday! Everyone was VERY impressed. I ran it as a sever (Mac G4, 400MHz, 1GigRAM, OS 10.3.5 with latest Java update from Apple) and as a client (17" 1.3 GHz G4 Powerbook, 1GigRAM, OS 10.3.5 & latest Java from Apple) over my wireless (802.11g) network. Everything went as smooth as silk. I was free to enjoy (getting my ass kicked) the tournament without worrying about managing it. It was a great success, the most fun I've had losing my ass. You should definitely NOT be giving this EXCELLENT piece of software away for free. In fact, I think you should be selling it to Casinos and Card Rooms for several hundred dollars a copy. I'm a software project manager and I have some idea of the pain you must have gone through to write and test this very full-featured cross platform application...." - from a very happy "Matt E" on August 24th, 2004