Hi,

In the old days I played a lot of counter-strike. A lot of players would come in a channel to set up a few matches or just talk and share a few links.

The good thing about IRC was the client software. I think the most used program is …..irc.co.uk/. It's very light and fast. 

Why I'm suggesting this is because I feel that the chatroom on the website is slow. It's also on the browser which tempts me to check facebook quickly or go to a few websites to read.

I think Quakenet is still the biggest server. There is the possibility to open your own chatroom and setup a few admins. If the channel is crowded for a few days then a special bot will join the channel to keep it open and auto moderate it (give admin powers to the right people). 

A few years ago I was in another poker community and a few regs stayed online the whole day but unfortunately that pokercommunity kind of died. I believe this IRC could be a nice addition to TPE.