Redline Poker has its origins in a dealer's choice cash game and Texas Hold'em tournament hosted by one of the site's creators.

For our cash game, a record of each player's buy-in and cash-out was written on the back of the money envelope. Five years' worth of envelopes generated a lot of data that begged to be summarized. Though it was fairly well known at the table whom the overall winners and losers were, summarizing the data would spell things out in black and white.

The data were initially put into a spreadsheet, but the spreadsheet was a poor solution because it was time consuming to add new players, and keep it current after each game. Furthermore, the spreadsheet was not readily shareable among the players. A web site was the next obvious step to collect and share our game's data.

Then came the popularization of Texas Hold'em via television. To accommodate the number of friends that knew of our cash game, and asked if we played Texas Hold'em, a monthly Texas Hold'em tournament was added to the poker playing calendar.

The tournament proved to be quite different from the cash game. Players that were eliminated early and didn't stick around to the end would often ask later, "Who won the tournament?", or "How did so-and-so do after he outdrew me on the river?"

Documenting the outcome of a tournament was an obvious way to answer such questions. This is especially true since the struggle to be the winner of a tournament makes for interesting reading, and pictures of the tournament winner cap off the narrative nicely.

Redline Poker was thus born to ease the management and record keeping of our poker games, and to present the results, recaps, and pictures to the players via the web. The site integrates many other features, including an invitation system that make the entire process of hosting a poker game or tournament simple and quick.

Having created Redline Poker to meet the needs of our own poker games, we feel that it will also prove of value to you.

If this is your first visit to Redline Poker, we welcome you to explore the site, and especially the sample games. They will give you a good feel for how your game will appear when managed here.

We plan to fine tune features of the site so please let us know your ideas for improvement.