For real tables, not virtual ones
Poker Now runs a full virtual poker table in the browser — dealt cards, chips, and remote friends. PokerChip.live solves the opposite night: your group is physically together with a real deck, and only the chips are missing. Both are free and browser-based; the difference is where your game happens. This page compares them honestly, including the nights where Poker Now is the better answer.
Built for in-person games with real cards
Free browser chips with blinds and side pots
Settlement and stats after every session
Two free browser tools for different situations. Details reflect public product information at the time of writing.
| Poker Now | PokerChip.live | |
|---|---|---|
| Game type | Fully virtual table for remote play | Digital chips for an in-person table |
| Cards | Dealt by the site | You deal a real deck |
| Runs in the browser | Yes | Yes |
| Free | Yes | Yes |
| Buy-ins and ledger | Session ledger | Buy-ins, cash-outs, and settlement |
| Long-term stats and clubs | Per-session focus | Cross-session stats and clubs |
If your friends are in different cities, Poker Now's virtual table is the right call and nothing here beats it. If everyone is around one table with snacks and a deck, replacing the whole game with screens is overkill — the cards, the reads and the table talk are the reason you all showed up. You only need the chips.
It is almost never the cards. It is that the chip case is missing, or the set has four colors and nine players, or nobody agreed what green is worth, or somebody has to reconstruct three hours of buy-ins from memory at midnight. Those are counting problems, not dealing problems, and they are what a digital chip tracker fixes while the physical game continues exactly as it was.
Poker Now players know the post-game ledger scramble. PokerChip.live tracks buy-ins and cash-outs during live games the same way, then computes who owes whom, so in-person nights end without spreadsheet work. If you already have a Poker Now ledger to settle, the calculator on the ledger settlement page handles it directly.
The practical test for any home-game tool is whether the least technical person at the table will use it. An app install kills that on the first night — someone is out of storage, someone is on a locked work phone, someone just will not. Both Poker Now and PokerChip.live run in a browser from a shared link, which is why either survives contact with a real group.
The moment someone is all in for less than the bet, a home game needs a main pot and a side pot, and the table has to work out who is eligible for which. Doing that with physical chips under time pressure is where most disputes start, and it gets worse with two short stacks in the same hand. A tracker computes the split as the bets go in, which removes the argument rather than adjudicating it.
Being honest about the trade: there is no automatic dealing, no shuffle, no hole-card record, and no way to play with someone who is not in the room. If any of those matter to your group, a virtual table is the correct choice and this is the wrong tool. The bet here is that for a group already sitting around one table, none of them do.
Tool changes fail at the table, not in the decision. Set the room up before people arrive, put the join link in the group chat rather than reading a code aloud, and run the first night with one person calling the actions while everyone else just watches their own stack. The second night nobody needs telling. Trying to teach a new tool during the first all-in is how a good tool gets rejected.
Plenty of groups play online mid-week and in person on weekends, and there is no reason to pick one tool for both. PokerChip.live keeps your in-person results, standings, and club stats in one place, so the weekend games still accumulate into a season even if the mid-week ones live somewhere else.
FAQ
01
Only for in-person games. Poker Now hosts remote virtual tables; PokerChip.live provides digital chips for real tables with real cards. If your group plays remotely, Poker Now remains the better tool and this is not trying to replace it.
02
No, and that is deliberate. Your group deals a physical deck while the browser tracks stacks, blinds, pots, and results. Dealing is the part of a home game that already works.
03
Yes. Rooms, joining, tracking, and settlement are free, with an optional Pro tier for ad-free play and advanced analytics. Nothing needed to run a game night sits behind the paid tier.
04
Yes. Buy-ins and final stacks are recorded automatically and the settlement view shows exactly who owes whom, using the same minimum-payments approach a Poker Now ledger needs at the end of a session.
05
PokerChip.live supports standard home-game table sizes — create a room and players join in seconds with the room code. In practice a physical table caps the number long before the software does.
06
No. Players can join a room as guests with just the room link, which matters when half the table is meeting the tool for the first time. An account only becomes useful if someone wants their results to persist across sessions.
07
Yes. The host can act for a player from their own device, so a table where one person will not touch an app still works — they play, somebody else moves their chips. It is worth agreeing that up front rather than discovering it at the first all-in.
08
The room state lives on the server, not on the phone, so rejoining from the same link restores their stack exactly. The host can also adjust any player's chips directly if a device is gone for good.
Create a free room, invite players, track live stacks, and share the final result when the game ends.
Create Game Room