I played in a 20-player home tournament this past weekend. It was my first time in a home game that big and it was a lot of fun. You gotta enjoy flopping quads with the money looming. My buddy Joe did a great job running it, particularlay since it was his first time managing multiple tables. The main takeaway was the usefulness of a good tournament clock. Without the monitor indicating time left and the blinds and antes for each level, I think the task of balancing tables, coloring up chips, and keeping the players informed would've become pretty overwhelming. Luckily, before the tourney Joe had downloaded Poker Clock, which performed admirably. It's not freeware, but if you are in the habit of hosting multitable tournaments, the $40 price tag seems pretty reasonable. It has everything you could want from tournament software: real-time stats, audio prompts, a flexible display, payout calculators, templates your can modify and save, and a bunch of other features. It's definitely worth a look, considering the 14-day trial version isn't crippled -- usually a good sign of a solid piece of software.
Poker Clock
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Nice interface.
What we did, instead of shelling out money, we made our own version. Sure, it's the ugliest thing you'll ever see, with black background and large blaring white text. It gets the job done. If anybody wants on, they can just drop a message here, and i'll send it on over to you.
Posted at 4:18PM on Jun 16th 2005 by LINES
3. DD Tournament Poker also includes a home game clock. I can't really recommend the game (Sorry, Annie!), but the clock works fine.
Posted at 4:18PM on Jun 16th 2005 by Harold Check
4. This is free? Nice... we can now kiss our coding good bye :D
Posted at 4:18PM on Jun 16th 2005 by LINES
6. I'll second Dave Johnston's comments about Tournament Director. It's by far the best tourney clock I've used and the donation-ware aspect is nice as well. Highly recommended.
Posted at 4:18PM on Jun 16th 2005 by Matt Walker
1. Great recommend, H. A good clock is essential to hosting a nice home tournament. I guess I've taken that for granted for a long time, but I'm sure many people don't even know that cool software exists that as-good or even better than what the actual casinos use to host their events.
I use The Tournament Director, which is "Donation-ware" - meaning that you can choose to download it and use it for free, but a donation is appreciated. It has worked flawlessly for me every time.
http://thetournamentdirector.net/
Posted at 4:18PM on Jun 16th 2005 by Dave Johnston