How to play poker without chips

By Michael Jonna

All you need is a deck of cards and your phones.

I was on my graduation trip with my college friends. We always played poker, but nobody brought chips, and none of us liked fully online poker. So I built Chipless.

Our phones became the chips. You still deal a real deck, shuffle, and stare each other down. Everyone's phone is their stack, and it keeps track of the bets, blinds and pot. At the end it shows who owes who.

  1. 1.Host starts a game on their phone.
  2. 2.Friends join by QR or code with just a name.
  3. 3.Deal real cards and bet with your phones.

My only coding experience was one class in college, and the first version cost me $68, about the price of a real poker set. Hands dealt so far, live: 30,400. The one thing I still miss is shuffling chips.

Start a game

Chipless keeps poker real: real cards, real people at the table. No cards, or friends who aren't there? I'm a fan of PokerNow!