Poker blind structure for a home game: five templates and your own

What a blind structure is

The list of levels for a tournament: small blind, big blind and ante at each one, how many minutes it lasts, where the breaks fall. Rising blinds push action and put a ceiling on how long the night can run.

The ante is a small forced bet every player puts in, on top of the blinds, and on the clock it shows as ANTE plus the number, only when a level has one. Skipping antes on the first few levels is common; they add nothing when stacks are still deep and everyone is folding cheap.

The Standard home game blind structure

The clock runs 255 minutes in total if nobody wins earlier. The home list shows each structure's size in the same form, for example 13 levels · 255 min total, where the count includes the break.

Which template fits your game?

Turbo, Standard and Deepstack are free. Hyper-Turbo and Long Weekend carry a PREMIUM tag: they need Pro, or you can unlock both for the session by watching one ad.

How to make your own blind structure template

1. On the home list, tap + at the top right. The New Structure screen opens with one level of 25/50 lasting 15 minutes.
2. Type a Structure name, for example Friday Night.
3. For each level, fill SB, BB and Ante (whole chip numbers) and set Duration in minutes (1 to 180).
4. Tap Add Level for the next one. It doubles the last small and big blind and copies the ante and minutes, so change the numbers if you want a gentler climb.
5. Tap Add Break to append a 10-minute break, or turn any row into a break with the Break switch.
6. Swipe right on a level to Duplicate it, swipe left to delete it, or tap Edit to drag levels into a new order.
7. Tap Save. The structure appears under My Structures.

Customise a built-in structure instead

Touch and hold Turbo, Standard or Deepstack and choose Duplicate to Customize. The copy lands in My Structures, where you can edit it; the built-ins themselves cannot be edited or deleted.

Example: duplicate Standard and set every blind level to 15 minutes. The clock total drops from 255 to 195 minutes (12 levels x 15 minutes plus the 15-minute break), a good fit for a 3-hour window.

Common mistakes

• Leaving Add Level's doubling alone for too long: it doubles on purpose, but four doublings in a row turns the late game into a coin flip, where a step like 300/600 to 400/800 would have kept actual play in it. This is the most common mistake.
• Too few levels: when the last one ends, the clock stops with Tournament Complete rather than inventing more blinds, so add a couple of spare levels if your game tends to run long.
• Forgetting the break: add one with Add Break wherever your night needs it.

There is no generator here. Poker Timer will not build a structure from your chip stacks, player count or target length, and there is no chip colour-up tool. You pick a template or type the levels yourself, every number by hand.

Questions and answers

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