home game
Poker night.
A poker night goes wrong in one of two ways. It ends at one in the morning with three people who wanted to leave at eleven, or it ends at ten with one person holding everything. Both are the same mistake: the blinds were guessed instead of worked out. Everything below is the arithmetic that stops that, and none of it needs anything you have to buy.
four decisions
Everything else follows from four numbers.
How many players, how long you want to play, what everyone starts with, and how many places get paid. Fix those four and the chip values, the blind levels and the finish time are no longer opinions, they are sums. A typical evening is nine players, four hours, 5,000 chips each and three paid places, and that is the example carried through this whole page.
The two numbers people get wrong are the last two. A starting stack is not a wealth, it is a unit: it only means something next to the big blind. Everyone starting on a hundred big blinds is the standard, so a 5,000 stack means the first big blind is 50. That single relationship is where the whole blind structure comes from, and it is also what decides which chip values you need in front of each player.
Poker chip distribution
How many chips each player starts with, which values to use, and why the smallest chip is your starting stack divided by two hundred.
Poker blind structure
A worked twelve level structure for a four hour evening, built from the chips on the table rather than copied from a casino.
Poker house rules
The handful of points a table has to settle before the first hand, a workable default for each, and the ones that are not a vote because the game already decides them.
the evening
A four hour night, on the clock.
Twelve levels of twenty minutes is four hours of poker. Add one ten minute break after level six and the last hand falls at four hours and ten. Below is that evening laid out from a twenty past seven start, which is the version that has people leaving on a weekday without anyone feeling cut short.
| Time | What happens | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 19:30 | Doors | Chips counted out before anyone arrives, not while they watch. |
| 19:50 | Seats drawn | A card each from a shuffled deck decides where people sit. |
| 20:00 | Cards in the air | Level 1, blinds 25 and 50, twenty minute levels. |
| 22:00 | Break | Ten minutes after level 6. Long enough to eat, short enough to come back. |
| 00:10 | Level 12 ends | Four hours of poker and one break, which is where the schedule was aimed. |
Two details in that table do more work than they look like. Counting the chips before anyone arrives turns twenty minutes of admin into zero, and drawing for seats from a shuffled deck removes the only pre game argument that has no right answer. Everything after that is the clock's job, and a clock left running at the end of the table answers the question that otherwise gets asked forty times a night.
paying out
Pay a fifth of the field, and say so first.
Roughly one place per five entrants, agreed out loud before the first hand and written on the same piece of paper as the blind levels. Nine players at 20 each is a pot of 180. Three paid places at 50, 30 and 20 percent makes that 90, 54 and 36, which adds back to 180. Doing that sum in front of everyone at the start takes thirty seconds and removes the one conversation that can end a friendship.
| Field | Places paid | Split | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 to 6 players | Two places | 65 / 35 | One prize for six players makes five people spectators for the last hour. |
| 7 to 12 players | Three places | 50 / 30 / 20 | The standard home game split, and the one nobody argues about. |
| 13 to 20 players | Four places | 40 / 28 / 19 / 13 | Flatter on purpose. A bigger field needs more people to leave happy. |
When two players are left and both would rather go home, the honest way to split is by chips and not by seat, because the chip leader is not certain to win. A deal calculator works out what each stack is actually worth from the remaining prizes, which is the same idea as the chip value maths that decides late tournament play.
If money changes hands at your table, two things sit outside this page and are worth reading once. Whether and how you are allowed to play for money depends entirely on where you live, and so does what a tax authority expects from a winner. Pokiq itself is a training platform and not a place to play for money, so neither question is about using this site.
house rules
Settle three things at level one.
What counts as a minimum raise when someone moves all in for less than a full raise, whether a card that touches the floor is dead, and how a string bet is treated. None of those has a single right answer at a kitchen table, which is exactly why they need one before they come up. The first and the third are settled in the Texas Hold'em rules, and the question of who wins a pot that looks tied is not a house rule at all: it is fixed by the hand ranking and the kicker.
If the table has beginners in it, print something. A single page that shows the ranking and the order of betting saves more time than any explanation, and a one page cheat sheet in the middle of the table means nobody has to ask twice. For anyone who wants to arrive already knowing which hands to play from which seat, the preflop charts are the shortest version of that.
next step
Put a clock at the end of the table.
Twenty levels, breaks in the right places, and the average stack updating as players bust. Open it on whatever screen is nearest, leave it running, and nobody has to ask what the blinds are again.
poker night questions
How do you host a poker night?
Decide four things before anyone arrives: how many players, how long the evening runs, what everyone starts with, and who pays out. The rest follows from those. Nine players, a four hour tournament, 5,000 chips each and three paid places is a complete plan, and everything else on this page is the arithmetic that turns it into a schedule.
How many players do you need for a poker night?
Six is comfortable, nine is the classic full table, and ten is the most a single table holds. Below five the blinds come round so fast that the evening is mostly defence. Above ten you need a second table, which means two clocks and a plan for merging them.
How long does a home poker tournament take?
As long as you decide, if you build the blinds around the answer. Twelve levels of twenty minutes plus one break is four hours and ten minutes. Pick the finish time first and let the blind schedule stretch or compress to reach it, rather than starting a structure and hoping.
Should a home game be a tournament or a cash game?
A tournament, for a first evening. It has a natural ending, everyone risks the same amount, and nobody has to count money mid hand. Cash games are better poker but they need change, a cashier and an agreement about when the game breaks, and any of those can sour an evening between friends.
How many chips does each player need?
Twenty to thirty chips is the practical band. Fewer than fifteen and someone is making change every hand, more than forty and the stacks get in the way of the cards. Twenty four chips in three colours, worth 5,000 in total, covers a standard evening.
What rules should you agree on before the first hand?
Three, and all three take a minute at level one and an argument at level nine: what a minimum raise is when someone is all in for less, whether a card that touches the felt is dead, and who wins a pot that looks tied. The first two are house rules, the third is fixed by the hand ranking.