Can you play poker without chips?
Yes. You need a way to represent amounts, not physical discs. Coins, matchsticks and written scores all work, and a phone works better than any of them because it does the arithmetic and keeps a record of who bought in for what.
Household substitutes fail in the same place: they have no denominations. Matchsticks are all worth one, so a pot of forty is forty matchsticks, and counting them is the part of the evening people remember.
Pen and paper works for a small table and breaks at the first side pot. Once one player is all in for less than the bet, the running total has to split in two, and that is where written scorekeeping starts producing numbers nobody can check.
The digital version keeps the cards physical, which is what people actually want. You still deal, still shuffle, still read the table — only the chips move to the phones, and the settlement at the end is already calculated.
The full answer
This question is covered in depth, with worked examples, on the page below.
How to play poker without chipsRun the whole night on your phones
Free, no app, no sign-up. Buy-ins, side pots and the final settlement are recorded as they happen.
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