Fewest transfers, zero arguments
Your Poker Now game ended and the ledger shows who's up and who's down — but not who should pay whom. Enter each player's buy-in and final stack below and the calculator produces the minimum set of payments that settles everyone. It also explains the two reasons a ledger refuses to balance, and why forcing it to balance is the one thing you should never do.
Minimum number of payments to settle
Works for Poker Now, home games, any ledger
Catches unbalanced ledgers before money moves
Nets must sum to zero. Matching the biggest debtor to the biggest creditor settles this table in three transfers instead of the fifteen that pairwise settling would produce.
| Player | Buy-in | Cash-out | Net | Settles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ana | $100 | $285 | +$185 | Receiving from Dan and Eve |
| Ben | $150 | $210 | +$60 | Receiving from Eve |
| Cal | $100 | $100 | $0 | Nothing to do |
| Dan | $100 | $0 | -$100 | Pays Ana $100 |
| Eve | $200 | $55 | -$145 | Pays Ana $85, pays Ben $60 |
| Fay | $100 | $100 | $0 | Nothing to do |
| Total | $750 | $750 | $0 | 3 payments |
In every case the fix is to find the missing entry, not to adjust someone's number until the column sums to zero.
| Symptom | Usual cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Total cash-outs exceed buy-ins | A rebuy was never recorded | Add the rebuy to that player |
| Buy-ins exceed cash-outs | Someone left without cashing out | Record their stack when they left |
| Off by a round number | Cash handed over off-platform | Log it as a buy-in or transfer |
| Off by a small amount | Chip count misread at cash-out | Recount from the chip photo if you have one |
Live calculator
Total buy-in
$400
Total cash-out
$480
Status
Check totals
Suggested payments
Blake pays Alex $60.00
Casey pays Alex $20.00
The ledger lists each player's total buy-in and final stack; the net column is the difference. Positive nets are owed money, negative nets owe it. All nets must sum to zero — winners are paid exactly by losers, because poker moves money between players rather than creating it. If the column does not sum to zero, stop before anyone pays anything.
Don't settle pairwise per pot — that produces a tangle of small transfers nobody completes. Match the biggest loser to the biggest winner, pay off whichever side zeroes out first, and repeat. That is what the calculator above does; a table of six players almost always settles in five payments or fewer, and often in three.
Two usual suspects: a rebuy recorded on one side but not the other, or a player who left mid-game without their cash-out being logged. Fix the entry rather than adjusting someone's number — a forced balance moves real money to the wrong person, and it is always the quiet player who absorbs the discrepancy.
When a ledger is off, the instinct is to blame the tool. In practice the gap is a human one: a late rebuy handed over in cash, a player who topped up from someone else's stack, or a chip count read wrong at cash-out. Walking the buy-in list in order with the group takes two minutes and finds it nearly every time.
Most groups end up paying through a mix of transfers and cash on the table. Decide the payment list first with everyone present, then let people settle however they like — the important part is that the list is agreed before anyone leaves. A payment list written down after the fact is a negotiation, not a record.
Real ledgers produce awkward numbers, and a payment list with $3.50 in it is a list that does not get completed. Agree a rounding convention before the session — most groups round to the nearest dollar or five and let the remainder sit with the biggest winner. What matters is that the rule is set in advance, because rounding decided afterwards always looks like it favoured whoever proposed it.
The uncomfortable one. A recorded ledger agreed in front of the group is most of the answer, because the dispute becomes a fact rather than two recollections. Beyond that this is a social problem and no calculator solves it — groups that survive tend to settle before anyone leaves, and to quietly stop inviting people who make that necessary.
PokerChip.live is the same idea for a physical table: real cards, digital chips, and the ledger builds itself — buy-ins, rebuys, and cash-outs recorded as they happen, with this settlement math run automatically at the end. The unbalanced-ledger problem largely disappears when nothing has to be reconstructed from memory.
FAQ
01
Take each player's net from the ledger (cash-out minus buy-in), then match losers to winners: the biggest debtor pays the biggest creditor until one side reaches zero, and repeat. The calculator on this page does it for you.
02
Usually an unrecorded rebuy or a mid-game leaver whose stack wasn't logged. Total buy-ins must equal total cash-outs; find the missing entry instead of forcing the numbers.
03
At most one fewer than the number of players with a non-zero result. Matching largest debts to largest credits usually gets close to that minimum, and the calculator above reports the list it found.
04
Always agree the payment list while the group is still together, even if the money moves later. Reconstructing a disputed ledger over text the next day is how home games lose players, and nobody remembers their cash-out accurately by then.
05
They cover different nights: Poker Now hosts remote virtual tables, PokerChip.live runs in-person games with real cards and digital chips. Many groups use both and settle with this same calculator.
06
Yes. It only needs each player's buy-in total and final stack, so it works for a pen-and-paper home game, a physical chip set, or any other tracker's export. Nothing about the maths is specific to one platform.
07
Yes. No sign-up, no download — enter buy-ins and cash-outs and the payment list appears instantly.
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