Tournament management · home game to festival
Felt runs poker tournaments end to end: the clock on the TV, floor staff on their phones, dealers at the tables, a wall of screens that never disagree, and a page of their own for every player. From a kitchen table to a ten-thousand-runner festival. It keeps working when the Wi-Fi doesn't.
One product
The difference between a home game and Day 1C of a Main Event is configuration, not a different product.
Home game
Pick a structure, add players by first name, plug the iPad into the telly. No account, no internet, nothing to set up. Free forever for up to 40 players over a few tables, which covers a house game and a charity night.
Pub league
Enter who came where and the table, the points and every player's page update on the spot. One profile per player across every venue you run, and your league under your own domain.
Card room and casino
Concurrent flights under separate directors, a dealer station at every table, a managed screen fleet, cash-game waitlists, an audit archive a regulator will accept, and an API your floor system can drive.
Reliability
Felt never stores "seconds remaining" and never broadcasts a tick. The clock is an anchor: when the level started, how long it lasts, how long it was paused. Every screen, phone and dealer station computes the countdown from that anchor on its own clock, and rolls over to the next level on its own.
So the iPad that runs the room is also the clock. If the pub's internet dies for an hour, the countdown does not flinch, the floor keeps busting players out, and everything queued reaches the cloud when it returns. The cloud is a replica of the room, not the other way round.
// the whole clock, on every device anchor = { levelIndex, levelDurationMs, startedAt, pausedAccumMs } remaining = duration − (now − startedAt − pausedAccum)
The room is a system
A manager who is signed in can authorise a floor phone, a dealer station or a wall screen in seconds with a QR code and a four-digit confirmation. Nobody holding those devices needs an account.
The iPad. Director on the glass, Cinema on the TV. Holds the lease. Runs a home game with no account and no network.
FELT FLOORThe companion. Floor, desk, dealer and player modes in one app. Sends intents, never writes.
FELT SCREENA named screen on the wall. Apple TV or any browser, pointed at any event from the floor.
FELT WEBThe operator console, and a full browser mirror of the iPad. Venues, leagues, results, rosters, billing.
Pub leagues
Most league nights are run however the pub runs them. At the end, somebody types who came where. Felt starts there: results in under a minute, points from your own scoring rule, standings that recompute themselves and explain every tie-break.
When a name looks like someone already on the roster, Felt asks rather than guessing. Every player can claim their own page once and keep it across every venue in the league, and across every other league on Felt.
Card rooms and casinos
Day 1A and Day 1B under two directors at once. A dealer station at every table. Forty screens pointed wherever the floor needs them. Cash-game lists with call-downs to a phone. And a log of every event, hash-chained, that a regulator can read.
Multi-day
Every flight is its own room with its own clock and director. Bag-and-tag by denomination, a Day 2 redraw that is seeded and provable, one live entry per player across concurrent flights, chips conserved through the bags.
Dealer stations
A dealer's phone or a venue iPad on a stand, bound to a table. Hand-for-hand from the table, a bust in one tap, chip counts at bag time, call the floor. It cannot touch another table or any money.
Screens and cash
Name every screen, group them by section, and put the Main Event clock on the wall and the £1/£2 list on the podium from a phone. Cash lists call players down by push or text. There is no money in the cash engine at all.
Trust
Buy-ins settle in cash or on the venue's own terminal. Felt records that they happened and computes what the payout schedule dictates, from a log that cannot be quietly edited.
There is no balance anywhere in Felt and no fee can be a function of a prize pool. Pot custody, escrow and in-app buy-ins are not features we have not built yet; they are things the product cannot express.
A tournament is an append-only, hash-chained log. Finishing places, payouts, league points and chips in play are all computed from it. Undo is a compensating event, never a delete, so a dispute is settled by replaying the night.
Ten invariants are checked continuously and shown in plain English. When a count disagrees, the director sees the delta and a one-tap resolution, never a hard block.
Pricing
The home tier is free forever: up to 40 players over a few tables, one session, the iPad and the floor phones, the spectator page and player profiles. Venues, league operators and casinos pay for the room, not for the people in it. Devices authorised by QR are never counted, and Felt never takes a share of a prize pool or an entry fee.
Waitlist
Felt is being built in four milestones, each ending with a real night: a home game, a pub league night, a card-room festival, a casino floor. Tell us which room is yours and we will be in touch when there is something to put in your hands.