Guide

Run your league, start to finish.

A quick start that takes you from sign-up to your first tournament in about ten minutes, then a short reference for every part of the app. Skim the quick start; come back for the rest when you need it.

The app in five places

  • TodayYour home base — the day's tournament and the button to start a new one.
  • RunThe live tournament: clock, check-in, seating, knockouts and the deal.
  • LeaguePlayers, seasons, the schedule and standings that carry across nights.
  • LibraryReusable pieces — blinds, payouts, chip sets, point charts — and saved setups.
  • SettingsYour league's name, language, currency, co-hosts, data export and this guide.

Start here

Quick start

Ten steps from nothing to a tournament running on screen. Each one is a single place in the app.

  1. 1

    Create your league

    Sign up and give your league a name. You're the owner, and everything lives under your league.

  2. 2

    Add your players

    In League → Players, add each regular — a nickname is enough. Give anyone who wants self-service a 4-digit PIN.

  3. 3

    Build your first tournament

    From Today or the Library, open New tournament. Set the buy-in, starting stack, blind schedule and payouts. Save it as a template to reuse every week.

  4. 4

    Check players in

    On the night, open the tournament to the Run screen and mark each person as they arrive — paid or unpaid.

  5. 5

    Seat the tables

    Seat draw seats everyone at random. You can seat players as they check in or all at once, whichever you chose when you set the tournament up. With more than one table, the app suggests rebalances as they thin and can break a short table onto the others.

  6. 6

    Start the clock

    Press start. Levels advance on their own; pause whenever you need; hand-for-hand freezes the timer at the bubble.

  7. 7

    Knock players out

    Tap a player out as they bust; the app records the finishing order. Mistap? Undo it. Record rebuys and add-ons here too.

  8. 8

    Make a deal (optional)

    At the final table, the deal calculator shows ICM and chip-chop numbers from the live prize list.

  9. 9

    Save the result

    The last knockout finishes the tournament. Standings and season points update automatically.

  10. 10

    Put it on screen

    Show the TV clock on any display; players scan the code to open the companion — standings, their seat, and a button to ask for a rebuy. No app, no account.

Before the first night

Set up your league

Do these once. They carry across every tournament you run.

The roster

  • Add playersAdd players one at a time, or import a list as a spreadsheet. A nickname is all that is required; a real name, email and phone are optional.
  • PINsGive a player a 4-digit PIN and they can act for themselves from their phone — request a rebuy, report a bust. It is casual identification, not a password, and is stored in plain text, so no one should reuse a PIN that matters.
  • Archive, remove or eraseArchive a player to hide them and keep everything, reversibly. Remove them to clear their contact details but keep a first name and last initial in past standings. Erase them to leave only a tombstone, for a data request. Past results stay either way, because other players’ finishing places depend on them.

Claiming a seat

A roster row and its PIN are all a player needs to play. Claiming is the optional extra: it attaches the row to an account so the player keeps their history across nights and leagues. It only adds a login, and never moves or changes their record.

  • Three ways it happensAn invite they accept whose verified email matches their roster row; a claim link you send that checks their verified email; or the player claiming themselves from the companion with a one-time email code.
  • PIN vs accountThe PIN stays the at-table credential every night; the account is what carries a player between games. The two live side by side.

Co-hosts & roles

  • RolesFour levels: owner, admin, manager, player. Admins run the league, managers run tournaments, and players are the roster.
  • Invite a co-hostFrom Settings, invite someone by email at a role and share the link — an org invite is a link you send, not an email the app fires. Pending invites expire.
  • Just for one nightTo hand someone a single power for a single tournament — the clock, check-in, knockouts — use the co-hosts tool on the Run screen rather than a standing role.

Seasons & standings

  • SeasonsGroup your nights into a season; each tournament you build can be filed under one.
  • PointsA points chart turns finishing places into standings points. Use a starter chart or write your own in the Library, and optionally count only each player’s best N results, so a missed night does not sink them.
  • StandingsThey live under League and move during play as players bust — provisional until the result is saved — and private tournaments still count toward them.

The Library

The one hub for the pieces you reuse. Build each once and pull it into any tournament.

  • Building blocksBlind schedules, payout structures, chip sets and point charts — plus your league rules and your saved tournament templates.
  • ImportBring any of the four building blocks in from a spreadsheet, or import one someone shared with a share code, instead of retyping it.

League settings

  • Name & lookYour league name, its language and currency, its time zone, and a background image for the TV clock.
  • Public pageA shareable page of your league at a glance, which you can switch off if you would rather stay private.
  • Recap emailOff by default; turn it on to email players a recap when a tournament ends.
  • Your dataExport everything the league holds at any time. Deleting the league is a 15-day window before it is gone for good.

The setup wizard

Build a tournament

New tournament walks through the whole setup. Most of it has a sensible default, so you can change only what matters and start — and save the result as a template to reuse.

The basics

  • Buy-in & stackWhat a seat costs and how many chips it buys. The buy-ins build the prize pool unless you set one by hand.
  • Level lengthHow many minutes each blind level runs. A blind schedule from the Library can set this for you.
  • Seating & tablesHow players are seated — all at once, as they pay, or by hand — and the most players you want at one table, which drives the seat draw and the rebalance suggestions.
  • Game styleCasual keeps the run screen simple, Pro shows every control, and Auto picks based on the size and features of the tournament.
  • Expected turnoutRoughly how many players and tables you expect. The seat draw uses it to spread people evenly from the first check-in, instead of filling one table first.

Blinds & chips

  • Blind schedulePick a saved schedule from the Library or build the levels inline. The schedule holds the small blind, big blind, ante and length of every level, breaks included.
  • Chip setOptionally attach a chip set. The app can then suggest a starting stack built from real denominations, and knows which chips to color up as the blinds climb.

Payouts & prize pool

A payout structure comes in three shapes, and the app keeps whichever you chose:

  • PercentagesA ladder that splits the pool by place — 50 / 30 / 20 and the like.
  • Fixed moneySet amounts per place. These pay in full even if the pool comes out smaller than planned.
  • By paid countA schedule that decides how many places pay, and how much, from the number of players who actually bought in on the night.

The prize pool is the buy-ins by default. Take a slice off the top for the house, a charity or the dealers, or set the whole pool by hand when the cash does not simply follow the seats.

Rebuys & add-ons

Turn either on and it appears on the run screen. Off, and it stays out of the way.

  • Price & chipsWhat a rebuy or add-on costs and the stack it grants, added to the pool and the player as you record them.
  • LimitsA cap on how many rebuys a player may take, and a cut-off level after which neither is offered.

Season & extras

  • Season & pointsFile the night under a season and choose the points chart that turns finishing places into standings points — or leave it out of the standings for a one-off.
  • ScheduleStart now, or set a date and time so it sits on the calendar until the night.
  • BountyPut a price on each knockout for a bounty tournament, tracked as players bust.
  • MinigamesAdd side games — a high hand, a bad-beat prize, a prop bet — that you record and rank or tally alongside the tournament.
  • PrivateKeep the night off every public surface. See the note below.

Save & reuse

  • Save as templateKeep a whole setup to reuse — everything here except the name, the private switch, the season and the date, which belong to one specific night.
  • CloneCopy a past tournament, private setting included, to rehost it exactly.
Heads up

Private is a hard off switch — it kills every public link, including the TV clock and the player companion. Set it before the night, not during it.

On the night

Run the night

The Run screen is where the night happens. It has three areas: the clock, the floor (players, tables and requests), and tools. On a phone they are tabs; on a larger screen they sit side by side.

The clock

The clock runs on the server, not on any one device, so it never drifts and a screen that wakes from sleep shows the right time at once.

  • Run & pauseStart, pause and resume. Pausing freezes every screen — the TV, the companion and your own — at the same instant.
  • LevelsA level counts down and advances on its own at zero. Jump to the next or previous level by hand, or add and subtract time on the level you are on. Breaks are just levels in the schedule.
  • Hand-for-handFreezes the timer at the bubble so every table plays the same number of hands before the money. Turning it on stamps the clock, so all the screens hold together.
  • Pause messagePut a note on a paused clock, like “Back in 10”, and it shows on the TV and the companion.
  • Color-upWhen a chip denomination is no longer needed to make any blind or ante, the app flags it so you can pull those chips from the tables, and tells you which one and from which level.

Players

  • Check-inMark each player paid or unpaid as they arrive. The prize pool and the player counts update live, and seating follows the mode you chose.
  • Rebuys & add-onsRecord a rebuy or add-on against a player, up to the cut-off level you set. Tapped one by mistake? Remove it. You cannot drive a count out of range by double-tapping.
  • KnockoutsTap a player out as they bust; optionally record who knocked them out, for bounties and stats. Finishing positions and season points compute from the order, and any knockout can be undone.
  • RemovePull someone who should not be in the night at all — different from knocking them out, which keeps them in the standings.

Tables & seating

  • SeatSeat draw seats everyone at random, or seat and move players one at a time. Open a new table, rename a table, and draw a dealer for each one.
  • BalanceAs tables thin out, the app suggests moving a player to even them up, or breaking a short table onto the others — which relocates just that table and leaves everyone else where they sit.
  • Final tableWhen the field fits on one table, it prompts the final-table break.

Player requests

Players with a PIN can act from their own phone: ask for a rebuy, report that they busted, or submit a minigame result. Each one lands in the Requests queue for you to accept or decline — nothing changes until you approve it.

Tools

  • Deal calculatorAt the final table, ICM and chip-chop numbers from the live prize list, with places already won removed. ICM is capped at nine players.
  • MinigamesTrack the side bets or bounties you set up — record results and rank or tally them.
  • Co-hostsHand specific powers to someone for this tournament only — control the clock, check players in, record knockouts, assign tables, or enter results — without making them an admin of your whole league.
  • TimelineA running log of everything that happened, in order.
  • Export & printResults, standings, the seat draw and payouts, as a spreadsheet or a clean printable sheet.

Second screens

  • TV clockThe big clock for the room, with the code players scan to join.
  • CompanionEach player’s phone view — standings, their seat, and their requests.
  • Present modeA full-screen view for a projector that you can also drive the clock from.
  • Door modeA stripped-down check-in screen for whoever is working the cash desk.
  • Hand-offPass a running tournament to a co-host’s device with a QR code that expires quickly.
Tip

The clock runs on the server, not your phone, so if a screen sleeps or a phone dies you can open the tournament on any other device and carry on. Almost everything — knockouts, rebuys, seat moves, the seat draw — can be undone. And turning the tournament private mid-night kills the TV clock and companion, so leave that alone once you have started.

The player side

What your players see

Nothing to install. Everything opens in a phone browser.

The companion

Players scan the code on the TV and the companion opens in their phone browser — no app, no account.

  • Follow alongThe clock and blinds, their table and seat, and the live standings that move as players bust.
  • Self-serviceWith their PIN, a player can ask for a rebuy, report that they busted, or submit a minigame result — each one queued for you to approve.

The TV clock

The big screen for the room: the countdown, the current and next blinds, breaks, and the code players scan to join. Set a background image for it in League settings.

RSVP before the night

Share a link ahead of time and players say if they are in or out. An “in” reply can check them in when they arrive, so the door moves faster.

Their own record

  • Claim a seatA player can attach their roster row to an account, with their PIN, to keep their history across nights — see Set up your league.
  • ProfileEach player has a profile: games played, wins, podiums, best and average finish, and prize money.
  • Public pageYour league can have a public page that shows the standings at a glance, which you control from League settings.
Heads up

A private tournament turns off every one of these — the companion, the TV clock and the public links all go dark. Set private before the night, never during it.

Wrapping up

After the night

The night records itself as you go. When it ends, this is what you have.

Results

The last knockout finishes the tournament on its own, or you can end it by hand. The saved result writes the finishing order and the season points that count. Need to fix something? Reopen a completed night, make the change, and save again.

Standings & profiles

Points land in the season standings the moment you save, and each player’s profile updates with it — their games, wins, podiums, finishes and winnings.

Recap email

Off by default. Switch it on for your league to email players a recap when a tournament ends, or send one by hand. One recap per tournament, either way.

Exports & printables

The results, standings, roster, seat draw and payouts each export as a spreadsheet, or print as a clean sheet you can save as a PDF.

The rest

Good to know

  • Plans & limitsEvery plan has every feature; plans differ only in size. Home carries 50 players on the roster and 20 per tournament, League 100 and 50, and Pro has no cap. Every league starts with a 30-day trial that needs no card.
  • Your dataExport any time. Deleting your league permanently removes every row that belongs to it.
  • PrivacyNo third-party tracking and no error-reporting service. Diagnostics live in our own database and are deleted as newer ones arrive.
  • Automate itAn AI assistant can run a tournament through the API — see the agent docs.
  • What's newEvery change ships to the changelog, and to What’s New inside the app.

Ready when you are.

Set up your league and run your first tournament. Sign-up needs no card.