How many places to pay
In a home game of 6 to 20 players, pay about the top 20 to 33% of the field, and a smaller share as it grows. Fewer places make winning more valuable; more places send more people home happy. In a small game, paying just the winner is fine. As the field grows, add places and give 1st a slightly smaller share.
Whatever you pick, decide it before the cards are dealt, and write it in your house rules.
Payout chart by field size
A good default for home tournaments, as a share of the prize pool:
| Players | Places paid | Split |
|---|---|---|
| 2–4 | 1 | 100% |
| 5–8 | 2 | 65% / 35% |
| 9–14 | 3 | 50% / 30% / 20% |
| 15–20 | 4 | 45% / 27% / 18% / 10% |
| 21–30 | 5 | 40% / 25% / 16% / 11% / 8% |
| 31–45 | 6 | 36% / 22% / 15% / 11% / 9% / 7% |
| 46–60 | 8 | 32% / 20% / 14% / 10% / 8% / 6.5% / 5% / 4.5% |
| 61+ | 10 | 30% / 19% / 13% / 9.5% / 7.5% / 6% / 5% / 4.5% / 3% / 2.5% |
Other common splits: 70/30 or 65/35 for two places, 50/30/20 for three, 50/25/15/10 for four. Any of them is fine, as long as everyone knows in advance.
What goes in the prize pool
Every buy-in, rebuy and add-on, minus anything you agreed to set aside (food, a season pot). For example, 12 players at $25, with 5 rebuys at $25 and 8 add-ons at $10, make a $505 pool.
Bounties are the exception: they're paid at the table when a player busts, so keep them out of the pool.
Round to amounts you can actually pay
Percentages rarely land on round numbers. A $433 pool paid 50/30/20 is $216.50, $129.90, $86.60. Round each place to the nearest $5: $215, $130, $88. When the pool itself isn't a multiple of $5, someone has to take the odd few dollars. Give them to whoever the rounding shortchanged most, not automatically to 1st, and it still adds up to the pool.
A season pot
Many leagues set aside a few dollars from every buy-in (say $5 of $25) for a season championship. Over 12 games with 10 players, $5 a head builds a $600 pot to pay the season's top finishers or fund a final game. Take it out before working out the night's payouts, and keep a running total everyone can see.
Bounties
In a knockout game, part of each entry is a bounty on that player's head, paid to whoever busts them. A $50 game might be $40 to the prize pool and $10 bounty. In a progressive knockout, half of each bounty is paid out and half is added to the knocker's own bounty. The bounty calculator works both out.
Chops and deals
When a few players are left late at night, someone will suggest splitting the remaining prize money instead of playing on. A deal needs every remaining player to agree. The usual ways to split:
- Even chop: the money still to be paid, split equally. Fair when the stacks are close.
- Chip chop: everyone first locks up the prize for the lowest place left; the rest is split by share of the chips. With $120 left over, a player with 50% of the chips takes $60 of it.
- ICM: a model of each stack's real prize equity. Fairer to short stacks than a chip chop, but it needs a calculator (Final Table has one built into the game clock).
Many leagues also agree how points work in a chop (often: points by chip count order, or everyone gets the points for the highest place left).
Places, prizes and points go together: see poker league points systems for the season side, and the league guide for everything else.