Host Guide

Everything you need to run a game night, start to finish — from setting up your group to running the tournament clock.

New here? The home page shows a Your first game night card with the four steps that matter, each ticking itself off as you go, and the pages it points to carry short tips of their own. This guide is the long version of the same path.

1 Set up your league (optional)

A league is your private group — your poker crew, board game club, or any circle. It scopes events, contacts, and stats so different groups don't see each other's stuff.

From the home page, open Leagues in the nav and create one. Give it a name and you're done.

This step is optional — you can create and run events without a league at all. A league only matters when you want to keep separate groups' events, contacts, and stats apart. If you only ever host the same crew, you can skip it.

2 Add your roster (optional, but recommended)

Open Contacts and add the people you'll invite. You can add them by name plus email or phone — they don't need to sign up first.

Bulk-add with Import CSV: a file of names and emails, one per line (Export CSV gives you the shape)
When a contact later creates an account on the site, they auto-link to the entry you already made — no double work

Optional, but recommended. A saved roster makes inviting people in the next step a couple of clicks instead of retyping the same emails every event — but you can always invite someone who isn't in your contacts yet.

3 Create the event

Click + Add Event on the home page or the Calendar, or click the date you want on the calendar grid (My Events, under your avatar menu, has the same button). The Add Event page opens with everything on one screen: the event itself across the top, a toolbar of options under it, and the guest list below.

The core fields:

League: the group this event belongs to, or None.
Visibility: Invitees only (just the people you invite), League members only (everyone in the league can see it), or Public.
The colour swatch beside the heading tags the event on the calendar.
Title (required), Date (required; today to start), Time (7:00 PM to start) and Duration (30m to 8h, or none).
Venue name and Address, both optional; the event page turns an address into an Open in Maps link.

Need notes for guests? Click + Description. Then the buttons at the right of the toolbar: with nobody on the guest list yet there is just Add Event. Once you have added guests it reads Save without sending, beside a green Save & Send Invites that saves and sends every invitation straight away. Either way you land on the event's page, and anything unsent can be sent from there.

The Add Event page with a title, date and venue filled in, the Poker and Reminders toggles on, and a single Add Event button

Visibility controls who can see the event. Sending invitations is a separate step (next) — you can invite people to an Invitees-only event without making it visible to your whole league.

4 Invite your guests

The guest list is the bottom half of the same page. Invited is on the right. On the left, All users lists the people you can pick from: your saved Contacts who have an account, plus the members of the league you chose. A brand-new host sees only themselves there, which is normal. Search with the box at the top, then move people across with the arrow buttons (› adds the selected, » adds everyone, ‹ and « take them back), or double-click a name.

Inviting someone who isn't on the site? Click + Add Name above the Invited list and type their name and an email address or phone number; they don't need an account. For a first event this is the way in, and everyone you add is saved to your Contacts for next time.
For each invitee you can preset an RSVP (Yes / No / Maybe) and a Role: Invitee or Manager (a Manager can edit the event with you).
On a league event, tick Hide non-members to narrow the left list to your league.

Every invitee gets a one-tap RSVP link delivered however they prefer, email, SMS or WhatsApp, so they can answer without logging in. Save & Send Invites sends them as you save; Save without sending holds them, and the event page offers a Send Invitations button when you're ready.

The guest list: All users on the left, Invited on the right with two guests typed into + Add Name rows, and the Save & Send Invites button above

You don't have to line everyone up now; you can also add players later, during check-in on event day, by typing their name on the dashboard or letting them register through the walk-in QR code (see step 7).

Each guest's contact method comes from their own profile, so the site routes each invite correctly; you don't pick the channel per person. Guests with accounts can also Sign up to attend on their own and Leave this event later if plans change. You are not on your own guest list until you put yourself there: Add yourself to the guest list on the event page does it.

5 Adjust the event's settings

The toolbar under the event fields holds the options that shape how it behaves:

Poker (on to start) shows the poker row: Type (Tournament or Cash), Buy-in $, Tables, Seats, a Deadline for RSVPs (None / 24h / 48h / 72h), and Played: in person, or online at FinalTable, which adds a Game and Betting pick. A capacity line totals the seats.
Reminders (on to start): the Send reminders dropdown lists the intervals (1 wk, 3 days, 2 days, 1 day, 12 hr, 2 hr, 30 min); tick the ones you want sent automatically.
Guest options opens a small menu: Waitlist (once you're at capacity, extra guests are marked Waitlisted), Require approval (RSVPs need your sign-off; guests sit at Pending until you approve them), Hide guest list, and, when Poker is off, Max guests (blank for no limit; with Poker on, capacity is tables × seats).

To change any of this later, open the event, click Edit, adjust, and Save Changes.

The toolbar with Poker and Reminders on and the Guest options menu open, with the poker row beneath

As guests respond, each one carries a status: Approved, Pending (awaiting your approval), Waitlisted (past capacity), or Denied.

6 Track RSVPs

Open the event and look at the Invites list. You'll see each person's response — yes, no, maybe, or no answer yet — and you can change it for them or hit Resend to send their invitation again.

Reminder messages go out automatically before the event — you don't need to nudge anyone manually.

7 Start the game

On event day, open the event and press Manage Game. An event saved with Poker on (the usual case; it is on unless you turned it off) already has its game, with the buy-in, tables and seats you set, and everyone who answered Yes is on the list. You land straight on the dashboard.

An event saved without poker shows a short Start Poker Session form first instead: the game type (Tournament or Cash Game), the buy-in, for a tournament the rebuy, add-on and starting chips, and the number of tables. Create Session & Import Players pulls in everyone who RSVP'd Yes.

On the dashboard, add walk-ins with the name field and + Add, filter by All / RSVP Yes / Playing / Out, and tick Buy In as each player pays: that checks them in and gives them a seat. The Table view shows who sits where, with Move…, Add Table when the room outgrows one, and Balance to even the tables out. The QR button opens a registration screen players can scan to sign themselves in, and ? Help on the dashboard explains every control on it.

The check-in dashboard with a session running: player rows with buy-in, rebuys, table, seat and status, the Setup button, the List / Table / Log / Payouts / Chop views, and the prize pool

When you're ready to play, click Timer to put the tournament clock on the big screen. It runs the blind schedule from Setup → Blinds, with your default structure loaded for you, breaks included. Everything about the game, blinds included, is edited in Setup, which is the next step.

Setup → Blinds: the level grid with durations, blinds, antes, a break and start times

The first time you open a tournament's check-in you're asked, once, which clock you'd like: the Tournament Timer, with designable layouts, break and final-table screens, a QR code that puts the clock on any phone or TV, and sounds; or Tournament Timer Classic, the original. Your answer becomes the default for new games, and any game can still switch under Setup → Timer.

The one-time prompt: Try the Tournament Timer, with Not now, Keep Classic and Use the Tournament Timer buttons

If you can manage the game, the display carries a control tray along its bottom edge: start / stop, previous and next level, −1m / +1m, reset the level, undo, fullscreen, and Exit back to check-in. From a keyboard, the space bar starts and stops and the arrow keys step a level. Everyone else sees a clean clock. Eliminations and rebuys are marked here on the check-in dashboard as the night goes on (every player row has them), and the display follows.

The Tournament Timer's Default Layout on a live game: the clock, blinds, next level and next break, players, average stack, entries and prize pool, the QR code, and the control tray along the bottom

The display, casting it to more screens and building a layout of your own are covered in the Timer Guide. Prefer the original clock? Tournament Timer Classic is a switch away under Setup → Timer.

At the end, Finish locks in the standings and payouts and the stats update. It warns first if players are still in or no payout structure is set, and Reopen puts the game back if something was wrong. A tournament finishes by itself when the last player is eliminated.

Payouts aren't loaded by default. A game made from the event's Poker settings starts with no payout structure, so the Payouts card is empty. If you want payout tracking (who finishes in the money, and for how much), set up a split first: Edit in Setup on the Payouts card, which is Setup → Payouts & Rewards.

If you turned on Approval for the event, players who register by scanning the QR code land in pending approval until you wave them in from the check-in dashboard.

8 Set the game up

Everything that defines the game lives behind the Setup button on the check-in dashboard. It opens an editor with a tab per topic:

Game — game type, buy-in, rebuys and add-ons, starting chips, tables and seats, and which league the event belongs to.
Payouts & Rewards — the payout split, plus points, entry-ticket values, prize labels, bounties and jackpots.
Blinds — the level schedule as an editable grid (Level, Duration, Small Blind, Big Blind, Ante, Start Time), with breaks, undo/redo, and a generator that builds a ladder for you.
Timer — whether this game uses Tournament Timer Classic or the Tournament Timer, and which layout its display shows. The Timer Guide covers the display, casting to more screens, and the layout editor.
Chip set — the denominations and colours drawn on the display as a legend, so players can see what each colour is worth at colour-up.

Blinds, Timer and Chip set apply to tournaments, so they're hidden for a cash game. Blinds and Timer also stay locked until the game has actually been saved as a tournament.

The game Setup editor showing its Game, Payouts & Rewards, Blinds, Timer and Chip set tabs

Save game commits the whole editor at once — every tab, including the blind schedule — and leaves you exactly where you were, on the same tab, with the button confirming Saved ✓ for a moment. Setting a game up usually takes a few passes, so saving is a checkpoint rather than an exit. Use Close (or Escape) when you're done; if anything is still unsaved you'll be asked before it's discarded.

Presets save the whole editor. The Game preset line at the top of Setup tells you whether this game came from a preset and whether it has drifted from it; Show presets opens the controls, which store game setup, payouts and rewards, the blind schedule and the timer settings as one reusable recipe — so next week's game is one Load away. Once opened, the controls stay open on that browser.

9 Put a video on the display (optional)

A layout cell can hold video — the ball game, a stream, a movie — alongside the clock and blinds. In the layout editor, pick a cell, choose Use a video stream instead, and paste a link. YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo and Kick work as-is.

For anything else, GameNight needs one thing: a public https address ending in .m3u8 or .mp4. No approval, no admin, no allow-list — paste it and it plays. .m3u8 is the format live streams use; .mp4 is a plain file.

How you get that address depends on your source:

It already gives you one. Most IPTV subscriptions hand you an https .m3u8. Paste it. Nothing to set up, and this covers most people.
It doesn't. A security camera, a raw TV feed or an RTMP stream can't play in a browser and has to be repackaged. Run a restreamer (datarhei Restreamer is the ready-made one) and put Cloudflare Tunnel or Tailscale Funnel in front of it — both hand you a public https address for free, with no port forwarding and no certificates to manage.

It has to be https, and it has to be public. This site runs over https, and browsers refuse to load video over a plain http connection, so an http link can never play no matter how good the stream is. An address like http://192.168.1.50:8080 fails twice over: it's not https, and it means nothing on anyone else's phone. If a link is rejected, the editor tells you exactly which of these went wrong.

Everyone watching pulls from wherever the stream lives. If that's a box in your house, every screen showing it is using your upload at once. One TV in the room is comfortable; a dozen phones is not. Consider putting the video on the big screen and letting people use the QR code for the clock.

For a live stream, set your restreamer to 2-second segments. That puts the display about six to ten seconds behind live instead of half a minute. If the source is already H.264, copy it rather than re-encoding — re-encoding a live feed adds delay and CPU load for nothing.

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