Home Poker System (http://www.homepokersystem.com)

Okay, so the first Squirrelinabox Network site, Squirrelinabox Poker, really hasn’t had any news or updates in awhile. The reasons for this are many and so I’ll just dive right in.

First off, the site was initially created as a way for me and some of my ex-coworkers to schedule and track some home poker games that we were going to start up. I decided to do an entire public website around it since I was already going to be coding most of the functionality needed to handle our own games. The thing is, these are all ex coworkers and many of us have gone our separate ways. We, unfortunately, were only able to get in one or two games before this split happened, so my personal motivation for the site has obviously taken a bit of a hit.

Next is the fact that Google banned the site from it’s Adsense advertising program - claiming it was a gambling site. The thing is, the site has absolutely no gambling at all on it. You don’t pay any money or win any money with the site. You just use the site to track and schedule your own home games. If you choose to use money in your own home games that’s up to you and doesn’t have anything to do with the site. Another funny thing is that Squirrelinabox Poker was, initially, personally reviewed by Google to make sure it was an ok site to have ads on (this was because it was the first site I submitted to them to enter the program). A few months later they decided it was a gambling site and removed it, thus removing a big chunk of revenue possibilities.

Recently, the United States government passed a law, or bill, or whatever, that has basically driven just about all online poker sites out of the United States and forces them to not allow any U.S. based users to access their sites. Now, since my site isn’t an online gambling site, this doesn’t directly impact my site. All those online gambling sites that were impacted, however, did make up a giant pool of advertising revenue that I was planning on capitalizing on in the future.

With all that said and done, the real reason the site hasn’t had too many updates is because when I do eventually get around to updating it, I’ll likely be doing a fairly major overhaul, including a rebranding and a full set of additional features and improvments. This would obviously take me a considerable amount of time, and as such, has been placed lower on my giant list of “to dos” since it’s not a time critical project.

The existing site does continue to function and still gets a couple new leagues each month. I get requests all the time for advertising and link partnerships from gambling sites and other poker related sites. I’ve even had a person ask to buy the site. This all tells me that there is definitely interest in the site. Hopefully it won’t be too long until I can get back to it.