Run Your First Tournament on Poker Timer: The Complete Walkthrough

It’s Friday, 6:47 PM. Eight friends will arrive between 7:00 and 7:15. By 7:20 you want the cards in the air. That’s 33 minutes — and you still need a blind structure, a chip count, a payout ladder, and a working clock.

This is the walkthrough that collapses those 33 minutes to four. End to end, every feature, zero filler. Open pokertimer.pro/setup. No account, no sign-in. We’ll be timing the first hand before you close this tab.

1. Design your chip set first (30 seconds)

Everything downstream depends on your chips. Blind levels have to be constructible from your actual denominations; payouts have to be payable in them; antes have to be enforceable.

Tap Chip Designer. The default set is 25 / 100 / 500 / 1,000 / 5,000. Pick three of those — not all five. Three denominations is the right answer regardless of how many colors are in your physical set.

For an eight-player, $20 buy-in with 10,000 starting chips, the cleanest set is:

Color	Value	Per player	Subtotal
Red	100	10	1,000
Blue	500	10	5,000
Black	1,000	4	4,000
		24 chips	10,000

The app will reject blind values that can’t be built from your chips — you won’t accidentally create a small blind of 20 with a smallest denomination of 25. This single constraint prevents more home-game mistakes than any other feature.

2. Configure buy-in, rebuys, and the pool

Buy-In: enter the amount per player (e.g. 20). Currency: the dropdown toggles $ £ € ¥. Every display updates when you switch.

Rebuys: toggle on if you want them. Set the rebuy amount (usually equal to buy-in) and the rebuy chip count. The prize pool recomputes live as rebuys come in. Limit the rebuy window to the first 4 levels — past that point, rebuys break the structure (we explain why in the blind structure post).

Extra Cash: optional. Use it for add-ons or when the winner of a side bet wants to seed the pool.

For an eight-player, $20 buy-in with three rebuys the app computes:

Buy-ins:     8 × $20  = $160
Rebuys:      3 × $20  = $60
Extra:                  $0
                       ----
Prize pool:            $220

The Payout Ladder panel reflects this total automatically. If a fourth rebuy comes in at level 3, every payout number on screen updates in real time.

3. Build the blind structure

Open Blind Editor. You see a vertical list of levels with handles on the left and editable cells on the right.

Three controls matter:

• ⋮⋮ drag handle — reorder levels.
• + Add Level — insert a new blind row below the selected one.
• + Add Break — insert a break (the clock pauses automatically when it hits one).

Two settings are worth understanding:

• Ante mode. % of BB at 12.5% is the cleanest default — every ante scales with the big blind automatically. The alternative is Custom per-level, useful when you want a specific level to spike.
• Late Registration closes at. Pick the level where new entries stop (a good default is end of level 5 — roughly 60–75 minutes in). The main display shows a countdown until close so stragglers can see the clock.

Starting from scratch is rarely necessary. Hit Auto-Generate with your buy-in, chip set, player count, and target duration. The app produces a balanced structure using the principles in the 3-hour home game guide: 50–80 BB starting depth, 30–50% level increases, two well-placed breaks, accelerating pressure toward the end.

4. Dial the payout curve

Open Payouts. You get three controls:

1. Paid spots (a number) — how many finishers get money.
2. Steepness (a slider, 0.3 → 2.0) — the shape of the curve.
3. Preview table — the exact dollar amounts by place, live.

For eight players, paying the top 3 with steepness 1.0 produces roughly:

Place	Share	$ (from $220 pool)
1st	55%	$121
2nd	30%	$66
3rd	15%	$33

Move the steepness slider. Watch the curve redraw and the payouts recalc. Steeper = more top-heavy. Flatter = more spots near min-cash. Pick the shape your regulars will come back to. The payout structures post goes deep on what happens behind the scenes — and the ICM post explains why your steepness choice is also a play-style choice.

5. Pick a theme (10 seconds)

Open Themes in the top-right. Eight curated looks — Classic, Neon, Casino Gold, Midnight, Tropical, Ocean, Forest, Gold. Tap one. The entire UI recolors.

Classic reads best from across a living room. Neon pops on a wall-mounted TV. Casino Gold is what every streamer picks. No wrong answer. You can change it mid-tournament without losing state.

6. Press Start

Tap Start Tournament. Setup fades out. The clock takes the whole screen.

You now see:

• Giant countdown (minutes:seconds), visible from ten feet away
• Current small / big / ante in a row beneath
• Next-level preview at the bottom (“Next: 300/600 · ante 75 in 4:12”)
• Active players / total players
• Prize pool and next payout milestone
• Chip denominations as a strip at the top
• A floating ⚙ menu button for configuration changes

Welcome to the tournament. The clock is running.

7. Add phone remote control (optional, huge)

Tap ⚙ Menu → Start Room. A modal opens showing:

• A six-character room code (e.g. RAX-7K2)
• A QR code
• The direct controller URL

Anyone helping you host scans the QR (or types the code) on their phone. They land on a controller page with phone-friendly buttons:

Button	Action
BUST	record an elimination
REBUY	record a rebuy
ADD	register a late entry
⏸ / ▶	pause or resume the timer
← / →	previous / next level
🎡 SPIN	spin the mystery bounty wheel

Every action syncs to the main display in real time. The host TV never has to be touched during the tournament. Bust a player from the bathroom. We won’t ask.

Note: multi-device remote control is a Pro feature (it uses server infrastructure to sync). The single-screen timer is always free.

8. Keyboard shortcuts (for the keyboard crowd)

If the clock is running on a laptop next to the table, four keys do everything:

Key	Action
B	bust
R	rebuy
A	add player
Space	pause / resume
←	previous level
→	next level

Same shortcuts on the host and the controller. Muscle memory in one tournament.

9. Mystery bounty flow

If you enabled mystery bounties during setup, a 🎡 Spin button appears on the timer whenever a bust happens during the bounty phase.

1. Tap 🎡 Spin.
2. The bounty wheel takes over the screen.
3. Wheel spins with physical easing — the ticker clicks against each segment.
4. It pauses for a half-second before revealing the segment. This is not an accident. It is the best moment of the night.
5. The prize amount reveals with a gold flash.
6. Tap Award to credit the eliminator.

The remaining bounty pool and remaining bounty count update automatically. For the math behind configuring the pool and distribution curve, see the mystery bounty guide.

10. The winner moment

When the final player busts and only one remains, the clock stops on its own. A gold trophy overlay appears with:

• The winner’s name or seat
• First-place payout
• Brief (not overbearing) confetti

Dismiss it and you land on a finishing-order summary with the full payout ladder. Screenshot it. Post it in the group chat. Collect the legend.

11. When things go sideways

Laptop died / tab closed: reopen pokertimer.pro. The tournament auto-resumed. Blinds, busts, rebuys, bounty pool — all preserved for 18 hours.

Accidental bust: ⚙ Menu → Players → tap the player → Undo bust. The active count corrects itself.

Structure is running too fast: tap any future level in the sidebar and edit its duration. Don’t touch completed levels — the app guards them.

Venue power cut: host state is local. If a phone controller was mid-action, it reconnects automatically when the host screen wakes up.

Someone disputes a chip count: the app doesn’t track individual stacks (that’s what physical chips are for). Your job is to arbitrate. Put blinds on pause with Space until everyone agrees.

12. After the tournament

Open ⚙ Menu → Summary. You get:

• Final standings
• Time per level (useful if you want to adjust next time)
• Rebuy count and pool size
• Bounties won by player (if enabled)

No data is sent anywhere. Nothing persists past your browser’s storage. If you want to save the summary, screenshot it.

The big picture

The hardest part of a home tournament is the 33 minutes before cards in the air. Poker Timer collapses that to four minutes: chips, blinds, buy-in, payouts, theme, press start.

Everything else — tracking players, advancing blinds, running the bounty wheel, computing payouts, syncing phones — happens without you thinking about it. Your job returns to what it’s supposed to be: dealing cards, pouring drinks, and calling the bluffs you’d otherwise miss because you were mid-way through a spreadsheet.

Launch setup →