Poker Blind Timer

A free tournament clock for home games — no app, no account.
Pick a preset or build your own blind structure, hit start, and put it fullscreen on a laptop or tablet at the table. Level-change sounds, breaks, and your structure saved in the browser.

Tournament clock

Level-change sound

1-minute warning

Tip: spacebar pauses and resumes.

Blind structure

Preset

Your structure and the running clock are saved automatically in this browser.

Running the game is half the job — track it too

✓ Log the night's result in 60 seconds when the game ends
✓ See which games — and which nights — are actually profitable for you
✓ Settle up the home game: who pays whom, computed for you
✓ Free for your first 10 sessions

The blind timer is always free. Create a free account for more — no credit card, free for your first 10 sessions.

How to set blind levels for a home tournament

Two numbers define a home tournament: the starting stack in big blinds, and how fast the blinds climb. Give everyone 50–100 big blinds to start — 5,000 chips at 25/50 blinds is the classic 100bb setup, deep enough that early play is real poker rather than a shove-fest. Shallower than 50bb and the first hour is already all-in-or-fold; much deeper and the night runs long.

Length comes from the blind ladder. Blinds that roughly double every two to three levels shrink stacks at a predictable pace: the tournament is effectively over once the average stack falls to about 10–20 big blinds, which for a typical ladder happens after 10–13 levels. Multiply levels by level length and you have your evening — the same structure runs about two hours with 10-minute levels or four with 20-minute levels:

Level length	Levels played (typical)	Approx. duration
10 min (turbo)	10–12	≈ 2 hours
15 min	10–13	≈ 3 hours
20 min (standard)	11–13	≈ 4 hours
30 min (deep)	12–14	≈ 6 hours

Designing the prize pool for the same tournament? Our free tournament payout calculator builds standard payout structures for any number of entries and any buy-in — it's the natural companion to this clock.

Typical home-game structures

The three presets above cover most nights. Standard — 25/50 start, 20-minute levels — is the safe default for 6–10 players who want a real game that still ends before midnight. Turbo halves every level to 10 minutes for a quick two-hour tournament or a second bullet after an early bust-out. Deep stretches levels to 30 minutes for players who want late-stage play to stay meaningful; budget a full evening. Whatever you pick, keep the blind jumps modest — each level around 1.5× the previous, never more than double — because one oversized jump flattens everyone to shove-or-fold at once.

When to add antes

Antes exist to create action: once stacks get shorter, an un-anted pot is too small to fight for, and the game stalls. The modern approach is the big blind ante — one player posts a single ante equal to the big blind for the whole table, rotating with the button — which is dramatically easier to run at a home game than collecting chips from everyone each hand. Introduce it after the first break, or roughly when the average stack drops below 40 big blinds. In the structure editor, just set the ante column from that level onward; the clock displays it under the blinds.

How long will your tournament take?

Player count moves the needle less than you'd expect, because busts accelerate as blinds climb: 6 players or 9 players on the same structure usually finish within a level or two of each other. What actually stretches the night is more starting chips (each doubling of the starting stack adds roughly two to three levels), rebuys and add-ons (count each rebuy as extra chips in play and add a level or two per full round of them), and breaks — remember to add the breaks themselves to your estimate. A practical formula: take the duration table above for your level length, add 10 minutes per scheduled break, and add ~20 minutes if you allow rebuys for the first hour.

Frequently asked questions

How long should blind levels be?

15–20 minutes is the sweet spot for most home games: long enough that skill matters, short enough that the night ends. Use 10-minute levels when you need the game done in about two hours, and 30-minute levels only if everyone has signed up for a long session. The level length is also your main lever mid-game — if the night is running late, it's fairer to shorten the remaining levels in the editor than to skip levels.

What blinds should we start at?

Pick blinds that make the starting stack 50–100 big blinds. The absolute numbers don't matter — 25/50 with 5,000 chips plays identically to 5/10 with 1,000 chips. Choose values that your physical chip denominations divide cleanly, avoid odd-number small blinds that force change-making, and start deeper (closer to 100bb) when your group likes postflop play.

How do breaks work in the timer?

A break is just a special row in the structure: add one, give it a length in minutes, and move it wherever you like with the arrows — most hosts put one every 4–6 levels. The clock counts the break down like any level, shows BREAK instead of blinds, plays the level-change sound when it ends, and rolls straight into the next level automatically. Break time is included in the total-elapsed readout.

Can I save my structure for next week's game?

Yes — twice over. The timer automatically stores your structure (and even a running clock) in this browser, so it's exactly where you left it next time you open the page on the same device. For anything sturdier, use Copy shareable link: the entire structure is encoded in the URL, so you can bookmark it, send it to a co-host, or open it on the laptop that actually sits at the table. And if you create a free PokerCharts account, you can log each game night's results and see how your home game is really going.