TG and Me

I remember going to an interview for a programming job with Tournament Games. I thought to myself, "How far back in the hills is this place?". After around 25 minutes of driving outside my hometown, almost to the end of a very long dead end road, I arrived at a driveway with Pearson on the mailbox. Whew! Finally found it! Well, I thought i found it. Turns out that the driveway was a mile or so long. Winding my way through woods, crossing a creek, passing a couple of barns, I found myself being stared at by a horse, donkey and a few dogs.... Is this the right place?

I continued another quarter mile, and finally see a home. It was a log cabin, nestled in the trees on the bank of the Cumberland River. Paradise! I get out of my truck, welcomed by cold wet doggy noses and paws on my chest. I notice a fishing boat tied to a tree in the water nearby, and a John Deere tractor waiting patiently for its next trip through the woods. I knock on the door to what seems to be a garage, and am welcomed inside by Jack. To me this did not look like a technically advanced place, but I soon learned that it was. Computers were blinking, hard drives chirping and screens displaying players from all over the world, who were at tournamentgames.com, playing Tournament Solitaire.

Somehow I convinced Jack to hire me. I cleared out a spot, set up a workstation and began to dig in to the inner workings of the site, soaking in all I could.

Not long afterward, we decided to move in to a real office, So we found a vacancy in town, and relocated all of the servers. It was nice, but we had to climb stairs to get to inside, it was not bad, heck it even had new carpet! This was in 2001, TG was already 4 years old, and I was like a little kid in a toy store. Not long after this, one of the original employees moved to a different job, and I was left with all of the programming responsibilites, and server duties. I was overwhelmed at first, but one is suprised on how much you can learn in a short amount of time when you have to.

Fast forward a few years. We figured, why not own our own office? It costs about the same as rent, and we can build equity. So we found a building that was for sale just a couple blocks away. Again, we moved all the servers (there were more this time around) and set up shop in what we now call home. Everyone had their own office, the servers even have their own air conditioned room. We were happy. During all of this we continued to streamline the site, add new games (and remove some!).

Since we were all small town folk, taking care of our players seemed second nature. We just treated our players, not as text on a screen, but as real humans. And you know what? We still have some of our original players. And we hope to keep you around for years to come.

Well, there's a little history for you. I used to say, "See you on the leader board", but since I get clobbered everytime I try to enter a tournament, I just say...

"Have Fun!"