The full reference for running a game. Tap a section below to jump to it. New here? Read the Host quick start first — it's ten minutes and covers the night end to end.
You're the Host. You run two things:
Players join your Game once with your passphrase, then sign up for each event from their own phone.
PotBoss is the scorekeeper. It never moves money — you do, in cash or in your own Venmo/PayPal.
⋮ menu in the header has the Host quick start, Show QR code, Player view and Sign out.An orange DEV badge next to the logo means you're on the development build, not your real data.
↑ Back to topDo this before game night, not at the table. Home → + New Game.
The form asks for a Game Name, a join passphrase, your amounts, chips and blinds. Stacks, prize split and blind structure are in collapsible sections — open the ones you care about. Tap Create Game at the bottom.
The Join Passphrase is what players type to join your Game — the app suggests an easy two-word one, and you can type your own. Capitalization doesn't matter. It's shown in yellow next to the Game name on Home and at the top of Manage Event, so you can read it out at the table.
The QR code in the ⋮ menu (Show QR code) points at PotBoss itself — it gets players to the app. They still need the passphrase to join your Game.
Under Default Amounts:
0 to turn that item off completely; the column then disappears from the roster.These are the amounts every event uses. They are read-only on Manage Event — to change them, edit the Game.
Each of rebuys and add-ons has an Untracked checkbox under its count.
You can flip an event to Untracked mid-game — see switching to Untracked mid-game.
Bounty ($) is what one knockout is worth. 0 turns bounties off and hides everything bounty-related. Bounties are optional per player — see bounties.
Chip Denominations — tap a chip to edit it, or + to add one. These are the chips your stacks and color-ups are built from.
Starting Stack — how many of each chip a player gets on buy-in. Enter a target total and tap Generate for a suggestion, then adjust. Rebuy Stack and Add-On Stack default to the starting stack; define them only if they differ.
In Blind Level Structure, fill in level 1 (duration, small and big blind) and how many levels you want, then tap Set Levels.
You get a structure built up from your level 1, going up about half again each level. Open at 25/50 and you'll get 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 125/250, 200/400, 300/600, 450/900, 675/1350 and on up. Every value is a whole multiple of your opening small blind, so it can always be paid with the chips you're playing, and no level ever raises by less than that opening blind.
That's a brisk structure, which is usually what a home game wants — but it climbs past a starting stack quickly. With 10,000 chips and a 25/50 open, you're into the serious levels by about level 8, so ask for eight or ten levels rather than fifteen. Add more later from the clock if the night is still going.
It's a starting point, not a verdict: every level stays editable afterwards. Each row has three small buttons on the right:
There's also + Add a level at the end below the list. If you already know the structure you want, generate roughly the right number of levels and then tap the values to match it.
Prize Split sets the paid places and percentages that new events start with. Each event can still be changed on its own Prize Setup screen without touching this default.
Electronic Payments (in Edit Game) is where you add your Venmo username and/or PayPal.me username, so players can top up their balance by paying you. Leave both blank for a cash-only game. See electronic payments for how it works on the night.
Home → Edit on the Game tile. Everything above can be changed here; tap Save Changes. New values apply everywhere immediately, including events already scheduled.
Duplicate creates a new Game with the same settings — amounts, chips, stacks, blinds, prize split — and no members or events. Handy for a one-off tournament with different stakes, or for a throwaway practice Game.
At the bottom of Edit Game, the red button (still labelled Delete Series) opens a confirmation panel that lists what you'd lose — events in progress, scheduled events, and members who owe or are owed money. If it says "No outstanding events or balances", it's safe.
Home → Schedule Event on the Game tile. You enter date, time and location — that's all. Buy-in, blinds, chips and stacks come from the Game. Tap Schedule Event and you land straight on Manage Event.
The event immediately appears in the app of everyone who has joined your Game.
The Event Details card at the top of Manage Event holds the date, time and location. Edit a field and tap away — it saves as you leave the field. These lock once the event is completed.
Players tap Join This Event on their home screen. They show up on your roster right away, not yet bought in. You don't have to wait for them — you can add anyone yourself (see adding a player).
The small red × on an event row on Home deletes it, along with its participants. It's offered for scheduled and completed events, never for one that's in progress.
Home → the purple Manage → button on the event row. A completed event shows View → instead and opens the same screen as a read-only record.
Top to bottom:
Start Event → flips the event to running and starts the clock at level 1. You can check players in before or after starting — nothing depends on the order.
If another event in the same Game is still running, you get a warning naming it. Start anyway leaves both running, which is almost never what you want — end the old one first.
Shows the pool, the player count, and — when add-ons are on — the Add-on Pool with its percentage controls (see below). Bounty money is not in this number.
When any entry money came off a player's balance, a Pool funding card appears:
It's a heads-up for payout time: it tells you how much actual cash you're holding. How you pay prizes back out isn't tracked here.
Buy-in, rebuy and add-on values, the rebuy and add-on counts (or Untracked), and the bounty value. These are read-only — they're configured on the Game. Two things can be changed here for this one event: the Untracked toggles and the bounty value.
Chips in play and Player Stacks are read-only reminders of what the Game defines — useful for answering "how many greens do I get on a rebuy?" without leaving the screen.
Blind Structure is editable while the event is still scheduled ("tap a value to edit"), and those edits apply to this event only. Once the event is running, edit levels from the clock instead (editing levels mid-game). On a completed event it's a read-only record.
↑ Back to topHome → Members on the Game tile. It holds three things: electronic payments waiting for your confirmation, electronic payouts you've started, and the member list with balances.
A balance is money you're holding for that player, inside this Game. It goes up when:
It goes down when they buy in, rebuy, add on or post a bounty — each of those spends the balance first — and when you pay them out.
Taking cash for someone's account. Type the amount in the member's Amount $ box and tap Take Cash, then confirm. That credits their balance and logs it as a deposit, exactly as a confirmed Venmo/PayPal top-up does. Use it when a player hands you money to hold rather than to enter with — say they give you $100 at the start of the night to cover buy-ins and rebuys.
Any member with a positive balance gets a pay-out row. Type an amount (or tap all to fill their whole balance), tap Pay Out, then choose how you're sending it:
You can't pay out more than the balance.
Electronic payouts you've started sit in this list until you finish them. Each row shows the method, the note code, and whether the player has confirmed it arrived ("✓ player confirmed" or "waiting for player").
× cancels a payout without debiting anything — for a send that failed. The player stays owed their money.The ▸ arrow next to a member's name expands their transaction log for this Game — deposits, buy-ins, rebuys, add-ons, bounties, prizes and withdrawals. Walk-ins have no log (there's no account behind them); their balance is still tracked normally.
At the bottom of the member list: the sum of every balance — all the money you're holding for players. After a properly settled night, that's what should still be sitting in your wallet or Venmo.
The small × in the corner of a member's row only appears when their balance is exactly $0. Pay them out first if it isn't.
Optional, and entirely between you and your players — PotBoss records the payment, it never handles the money.
Edit Game → Electronic Payments → enter your Venmo username and/or your PayPal.me username. Either alone is fine. Leave both blank and the game runs on cash, with no top-up buttons in the player app.
Each Game has a short payment tag, shown as PB-xxxx in the Electronic Payments panel. Every payment made through the app carries a note starting with that tag, so you can tell this Game's money apart from everything else in your Venmo feed — and from your other Games.
A player taps + Add funds, enters an amount and pays you from their wallet. That doesn't credit anything by itself — it puts a row in Payments to Confirm at the top of your Members page, and a 🔔 badge on the Game tile on Home.
× dismisses a claim you can't find in your wallet.Players save their own Venmo/PayPal handles in their app (Set up how you get paid). That's what makes the Venmo and PayPal buttons appear when you pay them a prize or a balance. No handle on file means cash only — nothing breaks.
Tapping Venmo/PayPal tries to open the wallet pre-filled. On some phones — Android especially — it doesn't launch. The screen then shows the handle, amount and note with copy buttons; pay by hand and the record is the same.
↑ Back to topType into Add Player to Event. As you type, members of this Game who aren't in the event yet appear below, each with their email (or "walk-in") and their balance.
The player you just added is pinned to the top of the list and highlighted, so you can check them in without hunting.
A walk-in is someone playing tonight who doesn't have the app. They buy in, rebuy, add on, post bounties and get paid out exactly like anyone else — you just tap for them. They have a balance you can hold money on, but no transaction log and no requests from their phone.
Walk-in names must be unique within an event, since there's no email to tell two apart. If the name is taken you'll see "… is already in this event — walk-in names must be unique"; add a last initial.
When a walk-in installs PotBoss and joins your Game, tap the 🔗 next to their name on the roster. Search the registered members by name or email and pick them. That:
Past events stay recorded under the walk-in as history. If the picker says no app players have joined yet, the player still needs to register and join with your passphrase first.
Registered players are allowed to share a nickname. When a name is duplicated in an event, each of those rows gets a small sub-label — the player's email, or "walk-in" — on the roster and in Prize Setup, so you can tell which is which.
Players who still need something from you — not bought in yet, or with a pending rebuy/add-on request — sort to the top; everyone else is alphabetical. The amber "N waiting" next to the Players heading counts them. The Buy column header glows amber until the first player is checked in.
The red ✕ at the end of a row removes that player from tonight's event. It only appears before they've bought in — undo the buy-in first if you need it (undoing a buy-in). Removing them from the event doesn't touch their balance or their membership in the Game.
Everything happens on one roster row: Buy, then a stepper per item you've turned on.
Tap the square in the Buy column. It turns green with a ✓ and, in one move:
A green dollar figure next to a player's name is their balance — that's what gets spent first. Buy-in is never blocked and never pushes anyone negative: if they have $0 on account, the whole buy-in is simply cash.
Tap the green ✓ again. It refunds the part that came off their account (plus the account part of any bounties they posted), takes the buy-in back out of the prize pool, and clears their bounties.
It won't un-buy someone who has rebuys or add-ons recorded — step those back to zero first, otherwise you'd have a player marked "not in" while holding rebuy chips.
Once a player is bought in, the Rebuys stepper is live. + gives one: balance first, cash for the rest, and the full rebuy goes to the prize pool. − takes one back and refunds the account portion. The + stops at the limit set on the Game.
A short confirmation ("Rebuy given to …") flashes on screen so you know the tap landed.
The Add-ons stepper works the same way, with one difference: add-on money goes into the separate add-on pool, and only the share you've chosen flows into the prize pool (below).
When a player taps Request Rebuy (or Request Add-On) in their app, a pulsing amber pill appears on their row.
✕ on the pill to dismiss the request without giving anything — useful when you've already handed over chips off-app, or when the item is untracked.You never have to wait for a request; the steppers are always there. Requests are just a way for players to flag you from the far end of the table.
When an item is Untracked, there's no per-player column for it. Instead the Prize Pool tile gets a counter — Untracked rebuys or Untracked add-ons — with a + Rebuy ($X) button and a − to fix a miscount. Each tap drops one rebuy's worth into the pool with no name attached ("No player attached — straight to the pool").
Untracked money is always collected in cash at the table — it never draws a balance, because the app doesn't know whose it is. Use it when you're playing and can't stop to look up names.
On the Amounts card, there's a checkbox per item: Untracked rebuys / Untracked add-ons — "one-tap, no per-player limit". It applies to this one event only — the Game's setting is untouched.
The toggle only appears for items your Game configures with a per-player limit — so turning it back off always returns to a real number rather than a guess. If your Game is already Untracked for an item, there's no toggle.
Add-on money lands in its own pool. On the Prize Pool tile, Add to prize pool plus the 25 / 50 / 75 / 100% buttons decide how much of it counts as prize money. The tile shows the split — "→ Prize Pool $X" and "Remaining in add-on pool $Y".
Changing the percentage recalculates across every add-on taken so far, so you can decide late. Amounts are rounded down to whole dollars.
↑ Back to topA bounty is a price on a player's head: they pay it, and whoever knocks them out collects it. Bounty money is kept apart from the prize pool, so your payout math stays clean.
Bounty ($) in your Game setup is what one knockout is worth. 0 means bounties are off, and nothing bounty-related shows up anywhere.
On the Amounts card of Manage Event, tap Set for this event / Change for this event. Enter a value and Save; 0 turns bounties off for tonight. Use game default clears the override and goes back to the Game's value.
Bounties are optional per player — buying in never charges anyone for one. Each bought-in player's row has a Bounties stepper: tap + to post one and collect it. Like a buy-in, it draws their balance first and assumes cash for the rest. − removes one and refunds the account portion.
A player can have one bounty per entry: one for the buy-in, plus one more for each rebuy. So when someone rebuys, their slot opens again — tap + if they want a fresh chip on their head. If they'd rather not, there's simply no bounty on them and nobody collects when they bust.
The player sees an orange ✓ Bounty tag in their own app with what they were charged.
PotBoss tracks bounty money, not who knocked out whom. That's what a physical bounty chip is for: hand one to each player who posts a bounty, and the winner of the pot takes it when they knock that player out. When someone turns a chip in, you redeem it.
An orange tile, separate from the Prize Pool. The headline is what's left to pay out — outstanding chips × the bounty value — so it falls with every redemption. Below it: "N of M chips outstanding", and how much you've already paid out.
When a player turns in a chip:
Either way the outstanding count drops by one. Redemption stays available after you end the event as long as chips are still outstanding — they do come in late.
The ↺ Undo button appears once anything has been redeemed. If you're undoing the redemption you just made in this session, the button names it ("↺ Undo — $20 to Diane B") and reverses it exactly, account credit included.
The Blind Levels card appears once the event is running (and the Game has blind levels). Players see a read-only copy of the same clock in their app.
When a level runs out, the app moves on by itself — and if your phone was locked or backgrounded, it catches up to the level you should actually be on rather than drifting.
A gentle chime plays a minute before the level ends, and sharper beeps in the last few seconds. Sound needs one tap in the app to unlock on phones, which the Start/Resume tap takes care of. While the clock is running the screen is kept awake so it doesn't lock mid-level.
A level marked as a break shows as ☕ BREAK. The clock does not auto-advance past a break — when the break time is up you get a "Break over" prompt, and the next level starts when you tap Start next round. Nobody comes back from the kitchen to find they've missed two levels.
When the clock reaches a break, a dialog opens with your two lowest denominations already ticked. Adjust the colors, add an optional message ("10-minute break — grab a drink!"), and tap Notify Players — it appears in every player's app for the break. Skip if you don't need it, and untick Color up chips to send just a message.
✎ Edit levels on the Blind Levels card opens the editor for this event. Past and current levels are locked — you're changing what's still to come: shorten the late levels when you're running long, add a break, flatten the jumps. Tap ✓ Done when finished. Changes apply to this event only, never to the Game.
↺ Reset puts the timer back to level 1, full time, paused — a recovery hatch for a false start. It only touches the clock: players, money and prizes are untouched.
↑ Back to topSet Prizes on Manage Event (View Prizes after the event is over). The current prize pool is in the header — it's the number everything below is calculated from.
A new event starts from your Game's default prize split, and changing it here doesn't touch that default.
Under Assign Finish Positions, pick each winner's place from the dropdown next to their name and leave everyone else blank. A place already taken by another player is greyed out, so two people can't be given 2nd.
Only players who bought in are listed — someone who signed up but never paid isn't in the tournament and can't be given a place.
Save & Calculate Prizes writes the split, works out each winner's amount, and builds the Confirm Payouts list below. If nothing happens, read the amber hint: either the pool is $0 (nobody has bought in) or you saved the split without setting any finish places — set them and save again.
Once any payout has been calculated, the split locks: 🔒 Payouts calculated — the split is locked. Paid places, percentages and rounding are frozen so a re-slice can't overpay a pot you've already started paying out. To change them, use Reset payouts.
A chop is when the players still in agree to divide the remaining prize money instead of playing it out. Pick Even, Chip or ICM — the player list turns into the chop: tick everyone in the deal, and for Chip and ICM enter their stacks. Each ticked player's amount previews next to their name, with "Split N ways → $X paid" and any leftover underneath. Then Save & Calculate Prizes as usual — the chop also assigns everyone's finish place.
For Chip and ICM you can enter exact chip counts or a simple ratio like 5 / 3 / 2 — only the relative sizes matter.
Every chopping player gets the same, regardless of chips. Simplest, and usually what a friendly table wants.
Everyone is guaranteed the smallest of the chopped prizes first, then the rest is split in proportion to chips. Easy to verify by hand, but slightly more generous to big stacks than ICM.
The Independent Chip Model splits the money by each player's chance of finishing in each paid place, based on stacks. A bigger stack earns more, but less than in direct proportion — you can only win one first prize — so ICM shifts money toward the shorter stacks compared with a chip chop.
The chop only divides the money for the open paid places — those not already assigned to a finisher. If 3rd is already settled, 3rd's money is out of the chop and the chop pool is 1st + 2nd. The tile above the list shows that pool.
You need at least one ticked player per open place (and at least two players). Ticking more players than there are open places is a save: the same money splits further, and the extra players are given the finish places just below the paid ones. The pool can't be overpaid either way.
If you've saved a chop and then re-tick a different set of players, the previous choppers' places are released so the places genuinely reopen.
One row per winner: place, amount, and the buttons to settle it. At the bottom, Still to pay $X of $Y counts down — including paid places nobody has been assigned to yet — until it reads All $Y paid out ✓.
Only Account touches a balance. Cash, Venmo and PayPal all move money directly from you to them.
An electronic prize shows Pending Venmo (or PayPal) on your screen. In their app, the player sees "The Host sent you $X" and taps Got it — the row becomes Paid Venmo ✓. Cash and Account are done the moment you tap them; there's nothing to confirm.
If the money doesn't arrive, the player taps Didn't arrive. Their row turns red (Disputed Venmo) with a line explaining it, the amount counts as outstanding again, and a ⚠ badge appears on that Game's tile on Home — tap it to jump straight to this screen.
Sort it out with the player, then settle the prize again with whichever button you actually used. That clears the dispute.
↺ Reset payouts at the bottom clears the calculated finish places and prize amounts so you can start the entry over — and unlocks the split. Prizes already paid are kept; only unpaid ones are cleared. Use it when you've entered the wrong places or want to redo a chop.
↑ Back to topNearly everything is reversible from the control that did it:
✓ again. Refunds the account portion and pulls the buy-in back out of the pool. Blocked while they have rebuys or add-ons (details).× in Payouts to Complete cancels it without debiting.Two things aren't undoable in place: a cash pay-out or prize (the money's gone — settle it the other way round by hand), and a walk-in link. And a completed electronic payout is a plain balance debit; fix it with another pay-out or by settling in cash.
↑ Back to topEnd Event on the Prize Pool tile marks the night finished. The event moves to the completed list on everyone's home screen.
What locks: event details, the roster (no adding or removing players), Buy, the rebuy/add-on/bounty steppers, the untracked counters, the add-on percentage, and the blind structure.
If you're in the beta, ending an event also offers the short questionnaire. It's two minutes and it's the whole point of the beta.
Beta hosts (and the dev build) get two buttons at the bottom of Manage Event. 🎲 Seed Demo Players fills the roster with six pre-registered demo players, all awaiting buy-in and with zero balances, so you can rehearse check-in, the clock, a rebuy and a payout. It also clears out walk-ins left from a previous practice run.
Best done in a throwaway Game — duplicate your real one, practise, then delete it.
🔄 Reset Event (with a confirmation) wipes the night back to scheduled: it deletes every participant, zeroes the prize pool and the add-on pool, resets the add-on percentage to 100%, clears the untracked counters and the bounties-paid-out count, resets the clock, and throws away the prize configuration.
They need the exact passphrase — capitalization doesn't matter. It's shown in yellow next to the Game name on Home and at the top of Manage Event. The QR code gets them the app, not the Game.
Check in this order: the pool grows by the full buy-in and rebuy no matter how they were paid; add-ons only contribute the percentage you chose, rounded down; bounty money is never in the pool; and untracked rebuys and add-ons are in there too, under the counters on the Prize Pool tile.
Open their transaction history (the ▸ on the Members page). Common causes: a top-up they sent that you haven't confirmed yet (it's in Payments to Confirm), an electronic payout you haven't completed (their balance drops only when you tap Complete), or a buy-in that quietly spent the balance they'd forgotten about.
See undoing things — buy-ins, rebuys, add-ons, bounties, redemptions and calculated prizes all reverse from the control that made them.
Have them register and join your Game with the passphrase, then tap the 🔗 on their walk-in row and pick them — see linking a walk-in. That moves their balance and tonight's entry across.
Someone has already posted one. The value locks for the event so chips already paid for aren't re-priced. Step the bounties back to zero on the roster if you really need to change it before anyone has played.
Payouts have been calculated. Reset payouts unlocks it and clears the unpaid prizes; prizes you've already settled stay put.
You started a second one past the warning. Nothing breaks — but the money and the clock are per-event, so make sure you're on the right Manage Event screen. End the one you're not using.
It shouldn't be — the clock catches up to where it should be when the app comes back. If you need to correct it, pause and use the + / − buttons, or ↺ Reset to start the structure over.
Email beta@potboss.poker. If something went wrong during a game, say which screen you were on and what you had just tapped — that is usually enough to track it down. Feature requests and "this bit confused me" are just as welcome as bugs.
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