Level up your
home game.
Field-tested tips, strategies, and deep dives for hosts who take their poker nights seriously.
What Your Chips Are Actually Worth: ICM, Risk Premiums, and How Every Decision Changes as the Tournament Goes On
A chip is worth less than a chip. We walk through the Independent Chip Model with concrete math, show how a 10,000 stack is worth different amounts at different stages, and translate the theory into hand-by-hand decisions — with a bounty-adjustment section.
Run Your First Tournament on Poker Timer: The Complete Walkthrough
Soup-to-nuts walkthrough of running a home tournament on Poker Timer — chip design, blind editor, remote control from your phone, mystery bounties, and the small moves that make the night run itself.
Payout Structures That Keep Players Coming Back
Flat vs. top-heavy payouts and how your curve shapes player satisfaction, rebuy rates, variance, and the ICM-driven style of play at your table. The math of retention, skill-rake, and optimal depth by field size.
Chip Denominations: Stop Making This Common Mistake
Most home game hosts use too many chip colors. The Rule of Three, the math of bet resolution, why a 1:5 ratio beats 1:4, and how to design a chip set that disappears from your players' cognitive load.
Mystery Bounty Tournaments: The Complete Host Guide
Everything you need to run a mystery bounty tournament at home — from prize pool math and bounty curve design to the ICM distortions that make chip leaders the most aggressive player at the table.
The Perfect Blind Structure for a 3-Hour Home Game
How to design a blind schedule that keeps the action moving without busting everyone in the first hour. The math behind level durations, SPR, the M-ratio, and why the geometry of your blind increases decides whether skill or luck wins the night.