Hosting your first home tournament — or trying to make your regular game run smoother? This is the complete playbook: how to set buy-ins, size the starting stacks, build a blind structure that lasts the right amount of time, pay out the winners, and keep the clock running so nobody argues. Free calculators are linked throughout.
Start with two numbers: how much each player pays to enter (the buy-in), and roughly how long you want the tournament to last. For most home games, a $20–$40 buy-in with 6–12 players and a 2–3 hour running time hits the sweet spot — long enough to feel real, short enough to finish on a weeknight.
Decide up front whether you'll allow rebuys (buying back in after busting) or add-ons. Rebuys keep everyone in the action and grow the prize pool, but they can drag out the early game. A common rule: rebuys allowed until the end of a set level (say, the first hour), then it's freeze-out to the finish.
This is where most home games go wrong. You don't need a specific dollar amount of chips — you need enough chips, in the right denominations, that the game plays deep enough to reward skill without running out of a color mid-night.
A good starting stack is 75–100 big blinds deep. If your big blind starts at 100 chips, a 10,000-chip starting stack is 100bb — plenty of room to play. The trick is matching the chip denominations you actually own to that stack so every player gets a clean, countable pile.
Enter the chips you own and your player count, and get an exact per-player stack — which chip is worth what, and how many of each to hand out. No more guessing.
The blind structure is the schedule that raises the stakes over time so the tournament actually ends. Blinds go up every level (usually every 15–20 minutes), forcing action as stacks get shallower relative to the blinds.
Two rules keep a home structure sane:
Pick your game length, starting stack, and chip denominations. Get a clean, printable 20-level blind schedule with antes and color-ups already worked out.
How many players get paid, and how much? A widely used guideline for home games:
| Players | Paid spots | Rough split |
|---|---|---|
| 2–6 | 1 | Winner takes all |
| 7–12 | 2–3 | ~60% / 30% / 10% |
| 13–18 | 3–4 | ~50% / 25% / 15% / 10% |
Round payouts to clean amounts (whole $5 increments work well) so nobody's counting out singles at 1 a.m. — and make the numbers sum exactly to the pool.
Enter your entries and buy-in. Get the prize pool, the number of paid spots, and a clean payout for each place that adds up to the penny.
The single biggest difference between a home game that feels legit and one that drags is a visible tournament clock. Everyone should be able to glance up and see: current blinds, time left in the level, next level, and how many players are left.
You can run this with a phone timer and a spreadsheet — but you'll spend the night as a human clock instead of playing. This is exactly the problem Poker Night solves: a live tournament clock that auto-advances levels, tracks busts and rebuys, calculates payouts, and even puts the board on your TV so the whole table can see it.
Nail those six and your tournament runs itself. The cards do the rest.
Poker Night is a free tournament clock, cash-game ledger, and live rail for your crew. The chip math, blinds, payouts, and clock — all in one place. Track your league when you're ready.
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