Guides · During the game
Almost every unreconcilable count traces back to a rebuy that nobody wrote down. The fix is not better memory — it is a rule agreed before the first hand and a record made at the moment the chips change hands.
Decide these four things before you deal
- Is rebuying allowed at all, and until when? “Unlimited until midnight” is a normal answer. So is “one rebuy each.” What causes arguments is not having answered.
- Must you be busted, or can you top up? Letting a short stack top back to full is common and fine, but it needs to be stated, because it changes what a stack size means.
- Is the rebuy the same size as the original buy-in? Usually yes. Half-buy-ins are a source of settlement errors out of proportion to their convenience.
- Who is holding the money? See being the banker.
Record it before the chips are pushed
The rebuy that goes missing is always the one handed over mid-hand, while the banker is in the pot and nobody wants to stop the action. Two habits prevent essentially all of it:
- Chips do not move until the entry exists. Writing it down takes four seconds and the hand can wait four seconds.
- Keep each buy-in as its own line, not a running total. If a player's record says “$60” you cannot tell whether that was three twenties or a twenty and a forty, and you cannot check it against anything. If it says “20, 20, 20” you can reconstruct the night.
Home Poker Ledger keeps buy-ins as separate entries for exactly this reason — the + Rebuy button adds a line rather than incrementing a number, and the line survives to the settlement screen.
Players who arrive late
Someone turning up two hours in is a normal part of a home game and needs no special treatment on the money side: they buy in for the standard amount and their net is calculated the same way as everyone else's. Time played does not enter the arithmetic.
What does need deciding is whether they come in for a full stack when the table has grown deep. If everyone else is sitting behind three buy-ins, a fresh single stack plays very differently. Common answers: let them buy in for the table average, or let them buy in short and rebuy freely. Either works. Deciding it while they stand behind a chair does not.
Add-ons and the final round
If you run a hard stop — last hand at 1am — be explicit about whether a rebuy is allowed on the last orbit. A player who busts on the second-to-last hand and rebuys for a full stack they will play twice has bought a lottery ticket at everyone's expense.
The usual rule is that rebuys close one full orbit before the end. Say so out loud when the orbit starts, not when someone asks.
Cashing out early
A player who leaves at 11pm is one of the two most common causes of a broken count — the other being an unrecorded rebuy. The failure is specific: they count their chips, take their money, and their chips go back into the tray before anyone records the cash-out figure.
Record the number first, then the chips go back. And it is worth a moment's care with the count, because their figure cannot be checked later — once those chips are mixed back into the tray, the evidence is gone.
If your count does end up short at the end, five ways a settlement goes wrong covers how to find where.