tools
Poker tournament clock.
Put a laptop at the end of the table, pick a speed, and press start. Twenty levels, breaks in the right places, antes from level five, and the average stack updating as players go out. Nothing to install and nobody to ask what the blinds are.
level 1 of 20
0:00 played
20:00
Blinds now
25 / 50
no ante yet
Next
50 / 100
no ante
Average stack
5,000
100 big blinds
The space bar starts and pauses the clock while you are not typing in a field.
the table
the structure, all twenty levels
The same ladder runs at all three speeds, because the shape of a structure is the ratio between the levels, and the level length only decides how long the night is. Blinds go up by roughly half each level and double every two, which is what makes a tournament end.
Played from level one to level twenty, breaks included, that is 3 hours 50 minutes on turbo, 7 hours 10 minutes on standard and 10 hours 30 minutes deep. Almost nobody gets there. A nine player home game at twenty minute levels is usually over somewhere around level nine, so about three and a half hours, and the levels beyond that are there so the night never runs out of structure.
| Level | Small blind | Big blind | Ante |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 | 50 | none |
| 2 | 50 | 100 | none |
| 3 | 75 | 150 | none |
| 4 | 100 | 200 | none |
| break, 5 minutes | |||
| 5 | 150 | 300 | 300 |
| 6 | 200 | 400 | 400 |
| 7 | 300 | 600 | 600 |
| 8 | 400 | 800 | 800 |
| break, 10 minutes | |||
| 9 | 500 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| 10 | 700 | 1,400 | 1,400 |
| 11 | 1,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
| 12 | 1,500 | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| break, 5 minutes | |||
| 13 | 2,000 | 4,000 | 4,000 |
| 14 | 3,000 | 6,000 | 6,000 |
| 15 | 4,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 |
| 16 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| break, 10 minutes | |||
| 17 | 6,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 |
| 18 | 8,000 | 16,000 | 16,000 |
| 19 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 |
| 20 | 15,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 |
running the night
The structure decides the game, not the players.
A tournament is a race between two numbers: the chips on the table, which never change, and the blinds, which double every couple of levels. When the average stack falls below about twenty big blinds the game turns into pushing and folding, and no amount of skill brings it back. That is why the level length matters more than any other setting here. Ten minute levels are a fun night. Thirty minute levels are a game of poker.
The average stack line under the clock is the number to watch, and it does the division for you: chips in play divided by players left, in big blinds. Update the players left each time someone busts and you always know which game you are in. It is the same question that decides whether a call is worth its price, only measured for the whole table at once.
Three things worth agreeing before the first hand, all of them arguments waiting to happen. What a raise has to be at least, when a player is all in for less than a full raise, and what happens to an odd chip in a split pot. All three are settled in the Texas Hold'em rules, and reading them once at the start is quicker than arguing at level nine. So is agreeing on which hand wins at showdown while everyone is still sober.
If you want the timer and nothing else, no chip counts and no structure table, the blind timer builds a schedule around the length you want the game to be and then just counts. And if the buy-in for tonight is a meaningful part of the money you play with, the bankroll calculator has an opinion about that.
clock questions
How long should poker blind levels be?
Twenty minutes is the usual answer for a home game, because it gives everyone a few orbits at each level without dragging the night out. A nine player game on that setting normally finishes in three to four hours. Ten minute levels turn the same structure into a turbo, and thirty minute levels keep stacks deep enough to play after the flop, at the price of a much longer night: the full twenty level ladder takes 3 hours 50 minutes on turbo and 10 hours 30 minutes deep.
What is a poker tournament clock?
A timer that runs the blind structure for you: it counts down the current level, shows what the blinds are now and what they become next, and tells the table when a break starts. Without one, someone has to remember, and someone always forgets.
When should antes start in a tournament?
Around the fifth level, once the blinds have doubled a couple of times. The structure on this page starts them at level 5 and sets each ante equal to the big blind, paid by one player per hand. That is how almost every live and online tournament now does it, and it is far faster than collecting an ante from everybody.
How many chips should each player start with?
Enough that the first level is worth playing: 100 big blinds is the standard, so 5,000 chips against blinds of 25 and 50. Fewer than 50 big blinds and the tournament is a shove fest from the first hand, however long you make the levels.
Does this tournament clock work offline?
Once the page has loaded, yes. Everything runs in your browser, so the clock keeps counting if the connection drops, and it keeps time from the system clock rather than by counting ticks, which means it stays accurate even when the tab sits in the background.
Can I change the blind structure?
You can change the speed, which is what actually decides how a tournament plays: the same twenty levels at ten, twenty or thirty minutes each. The ladder itself doubles roughly every two levels, which is the shape a tournament needs to finish.
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further in the app
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