What PokerPulse does today, and what still needs work

If you're the host, you know the job nobody signed up for. Somebody has to keep the tournament clock running, call the blind increases, and remember who put money into which side bet. On most nights, that somebody is you. You end up staring at a phone timer between hands instead of playing your own game.

That's the problem PokerPulse is built around. It runs in the browser at pokerpulse.live, on whatever phone, laptop or TV you already have. This page is the plain inventory: what it does right now, and what still needs work. No spin in either direction.

What's live right now

Tournaments. Create a tournament, set your blind structure, buy-in and payouts, then start it. The tournament stays on record for you and your players to come back to.

The clock and blind levels. While a tournament is running, PokerPulse counts down each level and moves to the next one when the time is up, with an alert so the table hears it. One thing to know: the host's phone or laptop needs to have the tournament open for that to happen. If every host screen is closed, the clock waits at zero until you come back.

A screen for the whole room. The Display page shows the clock, blinds and players on a TV or projector. Anyone with the tournament's code can open it, or the Live View on their own phone, without an account.

Payouts. Pick a payout split, from winner-take-all to a deeper structure, and PokerPulse works out the amount for each finishing place from the prize pool. If the final players want to make a deal, it can suggest a chop.

Eliminations and results. Record who busts and when, undo a mistake, and finish with a results page showing every place.

Leagues and cash games. Leagues keep standings across a series of tournaments. Cash games get their own ledger of buy-ins and cash-outs, with who owes whom at the end.

Side bets. You can log side bets and see what each winner is owed. It doesn't hold anyone's money, settle a wager, or move funds. If cash changes hands, that happens between the people at your table.

Chat. A tournament has a chat alongside the clock. Anyone following the tournament with its code can read it and post, so treat it like the table itself, not a private channel.

Accounts. Hosts sign in with an email and password.

Offline handling. There is offline handling built into the core flow. I am not going to tell you what it will do for your game when the connection drops, because I have not put it through enough real conditions to say. That gets its own post once I can describe it honestly.

What's not finished yet

Here's the part most product pages skip. On September 26, 2026, I measured the pokerpulse.live home page at phone and desktop sizes against basic visual standards: text size, the contrast between text and its background, and how big the tappable controls are. It did not come back clean.

On both phone and desktop, 27 combinations of text and background fall short of standard contrast guidelines, and 117 pieces of text render smaller than 12 pixels. Thirteen tappable controls on phone and twenty-one on desktop are smaller than a reliable size for a thumb. One spot clips text instead of showing it in full.

That's a punch list, and it's the main thing standing between PokerPulse as it is today and where I want it to be. I built the screens fast to get the core flow working, and the visual system, spacing, color and type sizes, grew piece by piece instead of from one consistent set of rules. Fixing it properly means building that system first, then going screen by screen, not nudging a few colors and calling it done.

Why I'm posting this

I'd rather you hear what's rough from me than find it by squinting at a screen mid-tournament. If you're running your game off a phone timer and want to hand the clock and blinds to PokerPulse instead, you can start a tournament tonight. The core of it works, and the polish is coming.