Texas Hold 'em Poker has become a major sport.  It is even on the major networks, including NBC and ESPN.  Casinos are quickly building or enlarging poker rooms to capture this wealth of poker business.  Players can play online at the many sites that have suddenly sprung up.  It is a simple game to play, yet it is tremendously exciting.  It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. 

Many people are beginning to invite their friends over and play home games.  My friends and I have been doing it for a few years, in fact.  But our games have been a bit disorganized as we tend to forget when to up the blinds and what level of blinds we are at.  This has sometimes interfered with our games and brought the fun to a screeching halt.  But since we started using Poker Timer our games have become much more professional, and fun.

Poker Timer is not just a timer, it is a tournament manager that is simple to use.  If you use it once, you will never play a tournament without it again.  It lets you control every aspect of a tournament, including the players, seating, starting chips, antes and blinds with just a couple clicks of the mouse.

The software is very intuitive, and though detailed instructions are included, you won't need them.  The Tournament Wizard takes you through all the steps:

After selecting the Tournament Wizard the first options screen comes up:

Just name the tournament, choose the starting chip total, buy-in and decide if there is a rake or rebuy.  We don't play with a Rake, which is a percentage the house keeps of every pot.  Sometimes we do play with Rebuy, which means anybody can pay $40 and buy another $10,000 in chips.

The blinds start $100, $200, and we play with no ante, though you can certainly change that.  We like our levels to go for 15 minutes before the blinds go up.

Above you see our blind structure.  It is easy to edit, just click on the pencil icon to the right of the blinds.  If you hit the "+" sign you can add a new blind.

After entering the blinds, you enter the players.  You can even mark them as Paid, and write notes about them.

Above is our list of players.  Usually we just have enough for one table, but this software can easily handle multi-table tournaments.  When we have 12 or more players we add a second table.  The software even assigns seats randomly if you choose that option.

In this tourney we have 8 players.

Entering the starting chips is simple as well.  Our white chips are worth $100, and we start with 10 chips, or $1000. 

We have $10,000 total starting chips made up of 10 $100 chips, 6 green $500 chips, and 6 red $1000 chips.

You can divvy up the winnings by actual amount or percentage.  With 8 players paying $40 each, our total pot is $320.  First place gets $200, second $80, and third gets $40.

All the data is now input into the system.  Above is the tournament summary. 

Just press Play and the clock starts.  You do have the ability to pause the clock at any time.

As players get eliminated, remove them from the tournament.  Just right click on the player and choose Eliminate Player.  In a multi table tournament this helps the system balance the seating.  If one table has two more players than the other, the system will tell you which player to move.

When you purchase the desktop version for $14.95, you also get the pocket pc version.  You can enter a tournament on your desktop, and transfer it to the pocket pc.  It is compatible with Pocket PC operating systems, 2000, 2002, 2003, WM5 and WM6. 

As you can see, it is very simple to setup and use.  After initial setup you should save the settings for future tournaments. 

The only negative I found is that the whistle that sounds after the blinds change is too short and not loud enough.  Some laptops and computers don't have a high volume setting, so to make up for this, the user should have the option of lengthening the time the whistle blows.  Otherwise, I absolutely love this program and highly recommend it.

Some words of caution when player poker.  Don't get too cocky when you rake in a big pot...

Or Rick will take your money!