Poker night without chips: three ways to do it

Someone says "let's play poker," everyone says yes, and then it turns out nobody owns chips. It happens a lot. The good news is that chips are only a way of keeping count, and there are other ways to keep count.

Here are three, with what each one is good at and what it costs you. One of them is ours, and we'll try to be fair to the other two.

What chips actually do

It helps to know what you're replacing. Chips do four jobs at a poker table:

• They show what each player has. One look at a stack and you know roughly where someone stands.
• They make a bet visible. Push chips forward and the whole table sees how much.
• They hold the pot. The pile in the middle is the pot. Nobody has to remember it.
• They settle the hand. The winner pulls the pile in, and the accounts are done.

Any substitute has to do those four things. The ways it does them badly are where the arguments come from.

Pen and paper

One person is the banker. They write everyone's name across the top of a sheet with a starting number under it, and after each hand they subtract what each player put in and add the pot to the winner.

What it's good at. It costs nothing and you can start in a minute. For two or three players and simple betting, it works.

What it costs. The banker is doing arithmetic all night instead of playing. Nobody can see anyone's stack without asking. The pot lives in people's heads during the hand, so "wait, did you call that?" comes up a lot. And the first time someone goes all-in for less than the bet and two others keep betting, the banker has a side pot to work out on the back of the sheet.

Make it work. Use round numbers: start everyone at 500 with blinds of 5 and 10, which is 50 big blinds each, and bet in fives. Say every bet out loud, and have the banker repeat the pot before each card is dealt. Take turns being banker.

What to use instead of poker chips

Anything small that you have a lot of can be a chip: coins, dried beans, matchsticks, toy bricks, buttons, or the cards from a second deck.

What it's good at. This is the closest to the real thing. Stacks are visible, bets are pushed forward, the pot sits in the middle and the winner takes it. People have played cards this way for a very long time.

What it costs. You need a lot of them. At 50 apiece, six players need 300 beans. If everything is worth one, big bets mean counting out handfuls, so you'll want two or three kinds worth different amounts, and then someone has to remember which is which. Stand-ins roll, spill and get mixed up, and making change in the middle of a hand slows everything down.

Make it work. Pick three kinds of thing that can't be confused and give them values a jump apart, like 1, 5 and 25. Write the values on a card in the middle of the table. Give everyone the same starting mix, worth about 50 big blinds, and keep a bowl of spares for making change.

A screen that keeps count

The third way is to let a computer be the banker, the chips and the dealer. That's what KARDX is: the TV shows the table and each player's phone holds their cards and their buttons. You open a Texas Hold'em table on the TV, everyone scans a code with their phone, and you're playing. There's no app to install and no account to make.

What it's good at. Every job chips do is done for you. Everyone's stack is on the TV. A bet is a tap, and the amount shows at your seat. The pot is a number in the middle that's always right. At the end of the hand the chips go to the winner, split pots and side pots included. Because it deals as well, you don't need a deck either, and nobody has to shuffle.

It also takes care of things chips don't: the blinds are posted from the correct seats, play passes to the next player in order, a clock keeps slow players moving, and a bet that isn't allowed can't be made.

What it costs. You need a screen everyone can see, a phone for each player, and an internet connection. A laptop plugged into the TV is the surest setup; a smart TV's own browser can work, but they vary. If a phone loses its connection in the middle of a hand, the clock moves the hand along without that player until they're back.

And you give up the feel of it. There's no stack to riffle while you think and no pile to drag in when you win. For some people that's half of poker. If that's you, a chip set is the right answer and this isn't.

Make it work. How to host a poker night walks through the evening. The short version: open the table before people arrive and deal one hand to show everyone the buttons.

Which one tonight?

If there are two or three of you and one pencil, play on paper. If you have a jar of coins and like things in your hands, use stand-ins. If you have a TV and everyone has a phone, let the screen do the counting and spend the night on the cards.

One thing they all have in common

None of them needs anything to be at stake. Poker is a good game when the only thing you can lose is the hand, and that's as true of beans and pencil marks as of the chips on a screen.

If you're setting stakes for the night, whatever you're counting with, poker blinds explained covers how big the blinds should be and how to make sure the game ends before sunrise.

Try it

Before the night, count out one player's starting stack in stand-ins: three kinds of thing worth 1, 5 and 25, about 50 big blinds in all. Time it, then multiply by the number of players coming. That tells you whether to count beans or let a screen do it.