Hi Discourse - I am new here and looking for advice on a new product I designed.

[poker.buddy]

Hi there everyone.

I am a young inventor and designer and I am about to release my first product onto the market. I wanted to get some opinions on the product first though. I don't want this to be direct advertising. I mainly just want some opinions to I can make it as sharp as possible before release.

I have developed a compact, travel poker set which I believe is the smallest poker set in the world. It is the same size as a pack of cards but the cards are still normal sized.

"How is that possible?" you might be wondering. Well every card has two circular holes cut through them. This means when the cards are stacked up as a deck there are two tubes through the deck. Inside this space fits two cylindrical chip holders and inside the chip holders are the chips (obviously). As the chips are cut from the same 0.33mm plastic as the cards I am able to fit 108 (i.e. 54 x 2) chips into each pack. In the top of the pack is a flat, rectangular dealer button. On the back of the deck is even the hand values of poker for any newcomers to poker that you might play with. The whole concept of the product is also patent pending.

Now I understand that this is no professional poker set for tournaments but as a casual travel poker set it works brilliantly. With that many poker chips you can have 4, or even 5 at a stretch, people playing with one deck. The problem I have tried to solve with this product is the un-casual nature of poker as a game. When you play poker with friends you normally have to pre-plan it all as, a full poker set is required. Unless you happen to be at the house of a person with a poker set, it is relatively difficult to get a game going.

The POKER BUDDY poker set changes this by making a poker set very compact and easy to carry in your pocket while also being very affordable. It means you don't have to carry around a whole suitcase with you to a friends house or on holiday.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask me lots about the product and let me know what you think of it (the good and the bad). I have been developing this product for around 9 months now and I feel it is at a point where I can show my work and hopefully release it on the market.

Anyway I have babbled on enough about the poker set. I will just leave some images of the set in the post.

Thanks for your time.

Paul Church.

[Alex Willis]

That is quite an interesting concept and a novelty gift item no doubt.  How usable is it?  As you've said, no serious poker player is going to give up his clay chips for these, but on a plane this would be cool!  I think if you brand them Bicycle, the novelty alone will drive sales.  Who else has a deck with two giant holes in the middle?  Now, the big question for those here is the card design.  How do you deal with the holes?  Do you have examples of the courts and numbered cards?

[poker.buddy]

I would love to have the bycicle brand on them. Unfortunately, unless I ramp up production into the 10,000's it is simply not financially viable. I have been working with a few different manufacturers including USPCC but the problem with western manufacturers is the cost. It's cheap to produce a normal custom deck of cards because all you are changing is the design. When you throw basically everything in the process of making a deck of cards out of the window, you have huge setup costs. Not only that but you have large labour costs due to the amount of hand work needed in packing the chips, chip holders, cards and dealer button into the pack (with the correct chip quantities). All of this means that if I wanted to have the cards produced by American manufacturers in quantities lower than 10,000 it will simply be too expensive.

I love that you asked about the problem of graphics on cards with holes in them. This was something that took quite a while to figure out. At first I tried shuffling around the usual court card designs. This of course proved fruitless. Instead, I realised that I would have much more freedom if I gave up on the usual design altogether. After all, this is how the best inventors think right? Instead the court cards detail a tragic love story between the jack, queen and king of the four suits. I will certainly upload some pictures for you of these when I take the other pictures later.

[poker.buddy]

I just noticed I said "unless I ramp up production". These are not in production yet. I meant I would have to start production with 10,000's.

[Don Boyer]

I love that you asked about the problem of graphics on cards with holes in them. This was something that took quite a while to figure out. At first I tried shuffling around the usual court card designs. This of course proved fruitless. Instead, I realised that I would have much more freedom if I gave up on the usual design altogether. After all, this is how the best inventors think right? Instead the court cards detail a tragic love story between the jack, queen and king of the four suits. I will certainly upload some pictures for you of these when I take the other pictures later.

If you're intending to sell this as a poker kit - which you are - you really shouldn't stray from the Anglo-American standard too far regarding the appearance of the court cards.  Popular poker nicknames for select court cards like the "Suicide King," "One-Eyed Jacks," "Bedpost Queen," etc., become meaningless if you alter the design too much, and poker players use those terms frequently.

A simple, quick-n-dirty solution would be to use a standard court image laid horizontally between the two holes of the kind often used in a jumbo-index deck.  Those decks have big indices, so they squeeze the center image into a smaller, more narrow space on the card.  Just lay that sideways and it should rest between the holes with a minimum of alteration.

And for future reference, "Introduce Yourself" is for introducing YOURSELF, not your project!    You already have a topic in Design/Dev for your deck, please keep the design discussions there.  Tell us something about you, if you would, please...

[atomicfrancisco]

Heya, I'm new on here too! just saying hi!