Tournament rules

Blinds and levels

• Everyone starts with the same chips, and the blinds go up at the end of each level, on a clock everyone can see.
• A new level starts with the next hand, never in the middle of one.
• Later levels add an ante. A big blind ante is put in by the player in the big blind, for the whole table.
• Breaks come every few levels. Each player's time bank gets a top-up at every break.

Colouring up

As the blinds grow, the smallest chips stop being needed. At a break, they're coloured up: swapped for bigger chips, with any remainder rounded up in the player's favour.

Late entry, rebuys and add-ons

• Late entry lets players join after the start, until the end of a level the host sets, with the host's yes. It always closes by the end of the level before the last.
• Rebuys let a player buy back in for the starting chips, when they're out of chips or below the starting stack, as the host chooses. A request nobody answers lapses after two minutes.
• Add-ons give everyone still in the chance of more chips, usually at the first break.

All of these are in chips. The prize pool is exactly what went in.

More than one table

• Balancing: tables are kept within one player of each other. A player moved to another table is given a random seat there, and never between the small blind and the button.
• Breaking tables: as players go out, the smallest table breaks and its players move to empty seats.
• Hand for hand: on the bubble, the last place before the prizes, every table plays one hand at a time and waits for the others, with the clock stopped.
• The final table is drawn at random.

How places are decided

• Players knocked out in different hands place in the order they went out.
• Players knocked out in the same hand place by the chips they started that hand with: the bigger stack places higher. In a big blind ante level, the big blind's stack counts after the ante.
• On the bubble, players going out in the same round of hand for hand are tied.

Our home-game choices

• The button moves to the next player dealt in, with no dead button: nobody posts a blind twice.
• Heads-up, the button posts the small blind and acts first before the flop, as usual, and nobody pays the big blind twice in a row.
• Running it twice and the rabbit hunt are up to the host.
• A player who misses their turn is sat out, and their chips stay in play: they're still dealt in, and the table checks or folds for them until they're back.