The Club House VS @imqueue

The Club House's answer

The Club House keeps the whole poker night in one record instead of spreading it across a timer app, a spreadsheet and a group chat. The clock, the blind structure, seating, the prize pool, rebuys, knockouts and the final placements are all the same tournament, so the payouts on the TV come from the money actually collected and the league table updates itself the moment the night ends.

It is also built around a room rather than a single device. Every screen — the TV on the wall, the host's phone, the players' phones — stays in step, so pausing the clock on a phone pauses it in the room, and a seat change reaches the player before they stand up. Premium adds a drag-and-drop layout editor so you can build the display your room actually needs.

And tournaments and cash games live in the same club against the same member profiles, so a regular's history shows both kinds of game in one place.

The Club House's answer

People who host poker rather than play in someone else's casino: the person who runs the weekly home game, the organiser of a pub or social club league, a private poker club, a workplace or charity tournament, and small venues running regular events.

The common thread is a recurring game with the same faces, a season worth of results that someone currently keeps in a spreadsheet, and a room with a TV in it. They are not looking for a poker site to play on — they are looking for the software that runs the night and remembers it.

Players are the second audience: they register by link, follow the clock and seating on their phones, and get a profile with their full record, statistics and achievements without the host having to send anything.

The Club House's answer

Because the free plan is the product, not a demo. A full poker night — unlimited tournaments, the shared clock on the TV, payouts, leaderboards and player statistics — runs on the free plan for up to nine players at one table. Premium ($14/month, or $140/year) removes the size limits and adds the layout editor; nothing you need for a normal home game sits behind a paywall.

Beyond that: nothing to install, since it runs in any browser and the TV is just another browser; the host runs the floor from their phone rather than from the machine driving the clock; leagues are scored by a preset or a formula you write, with standings recalculating on their own; and you can import years of spreadsheet history, so a club that has been running since 2019 does not start from zero.

It is also built by someone who runs the games it is tested on, so the parts that matter on the night — late registration, rebuys, table balancing, fixing a result you got wrong — are there because they were needed, not because they filled a feature list.

The Club House's answer

• Next.js (App Router) and React with TypeScript
• MUI and Emotion for the interface
• Supabase — Postgres, row-level security, realtime and edge functions — as the backend, which is what keeps every screen in the room in step with the clock
• TanStack Query for client data
• Stripe for subscriptions and billing
• Vercel for hosting
• next-intl for English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
• ApexCharts and Chart.js for player and club statistics, GSAP and Three.js on the public site

It runs entirely in the browser — there is nothing to install, and a TV or tablet showing the tournament display is just another browser session.

The Club House's answer

It started with a deck, a table, and a spreadsheet nobody wanted to own.

Rafael Cardoso, an Australia-based product and engineering leader and a keen poker player, built the first blind timer for his own home game — because the night needed a clock every seat could see, payouts nobody argued about, and a league table that did not live on one person's laptop, and none of that could be bought as one thing.

The timer turned into structures, then seating, then payouts, then a league, then player profiles and a season's history, as each week's game asked for the next piece. He still runs the tournaments, leagues and cash games the product is tested on, which is why the features tend to be the ones a host actually reaches for on the night rather than the ones that look good on a list.

The full story is at https://theclubhousepoker.com/about.