PokerEye is a free poker tournament director: a tournament clock with automatic blind levels, player and rebuy tracking, automatic table seating and payout calculation. No subscription, no ads. It runs in your browser and on Android.
Hosting a home poker tournament is more fun when the structure runs itself. You shouldn't be doing mental math on blind increases while you're trying to play. This guide walks through everything you need to run a smooth tournament — blind structures, starting chips, seating, rebuys and payouts — and PokerEye handles the bookkeeping so you can focus on the game.
Pick a buy-in everyone is comfortable with — €10, €20 or €50 are common for friendly games. The prize pool is simply the total of all buy-ins, plus any rebuys and add-ons. A typical home tournament pays the top 10–20% of the field. With 9 players, paying the top 3 (for example 50% / 30% / 20%) keeps it interesting without making min-cashing feel pointless.
A good rule of thumb is a starting stack of 50–100 big blinds. If your starting big blind is 100, give each player 5,000–10,000 in chips. The blind structure is the schedule of how blinds increase over time. Slower structures reward skill; faster ones get you to a winner sooner.
| Level | Small / Big blind | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 / 50 | 15–20 min |
| 2 | 50 / 100 | 15–20 min |
| 3 | 75 / 150 | 15–20 min |
| 4 | 100 / 200 | 15–20 min |
| 5 | 150 / 300 | 15–20 min |
For most home games, 15–20 minute levels hit the sweet spot. PokerEye ships with ready-to-play blind structures and lets you customise every level, ante and break — and edit them mid-tournament without resetting.
With one table, just deal for the button. With two or more tables, seating should be random, and tables need to stay balanced as players bust out. Manually re-seating people is the most annoying part of directing a multi-table game — so PokerEye seats players automatically and rebalances tables for you, with undo if someone is reinstated.
A visible poker tournament clock is the heart of any well-run game. Put it on a tablet or TV so everyone can see the current level, the time remaining and when blinds go up. PokerEye's full-screen clock shows the current and next blinds, plays an alert when levels change, and keeps the screen awake so it never sleeps mid-level.
As the night goes on, you'll have rebuys, add-ons and players busting out. Tracking this by hand is error-prone. PokerEye records every buy-in, rebuy and add-on, updates the prize pool automatically, and logs final placements as players are eliminated — so the payout at the end is correct to the cent.
When you reach the money, PokerEye calculates each prize from the live prize pool and your payout percentages. Every tournament is saved to history, so you can look back at past results.
▶ Run your next tournament with PokerEye — free