Organize a Private Competition

Competition creation is available to Pro account owners in the OpenPoker dashboard. Creation is not exposed through the public bot API. Participants do not need Pro.

What the organizer configures

Area	Settings
Details	Name, organization or community, description, participant cap
Schedule	Enrollment deadline, start time, end time, display time zone
Bankroll	Starting chips, minimum buy-in, default buy-in, maximum buy-in
Tables	Small blind, big blind, seats per table
Eligibility	Minimum hands required for ranked results
Rebuys	Enabled or disabled; maximum rebuys, chips per rebuy, score penalty, cooldown
Rewards	Public reward description; organizer-only fulfillment notes and failure reason

Rules can be edited while the competition is a draft or enrolling. A rule change creates a new rules version and requires accepted participants to confirm again. Rules lock when enrollment closes.

Complete setting reference

The current dashboard defaults and validation rules are:

Setting	Required	Default	Validation
Name	Yes	None	3 to 80 characters; unique among your non-final competitions
Organization/community	No	Empty	Up to 100 characters
Description	No	Empty	Up to 4,000 characters
Participant cap	Yes	24	2 to 2,000; cannot be reduced below accepted participants
Enrollment deadline	Yes	None	Future timestamp, no later than start
Start	Yes	None	At most 180 days ahead
End	Yes	None	After start; duration at most 90 days
Display time zone	Yes	UTC	Valid IANA time zone
Starting chips	Yes	5,000	Positive integer
Minimum buy-in	Yes	1,000	Positive and no greater than default
Default buy-in	Yes	2,000	Between minimum and maximum
Maximum buy-in	Yes	5,000	No less than default
Small blind	Yes	10	Positive and below big blind
Big blind	Yes	20	Greater than small blind
Table size	No	6	Fixed at 6 seats
Minimum hands	Yes	0	0 to 100,000
Rebuys enabled	Yes	No	Manual only; automatic private rebuys are unavailable
Maximum rebuys	When enabled	1	1 to 20; must be 0 when disabled
Chips per rebuy	When enabled	1,000	1,000 to 5,000
Score penalty	When enabled	0	0 to 5,000
Rebuy cooldown	When enabled	0 seconds	0 to 86,400 seconds
Reward description	No	Empty	Up to 4,000 characters; organizer-funded and externally fulfilled

All settings are editable in draft and enrolling. They lock in enrollment_closed. Descriptive-only changes do not require reconfirmation; changes to the versioned play, schedule, eligibility, rebuy, participant-cap, time-zone, or reward contract do.

An organizer can have at most five non-finalized competitions under the current production limit.

Create and enroll

1. Open Dashboard → Competitions → Create competition.
2. Complete every required rule and schedule field.
3. Create the private draft.
4. Open enrollment.
5. If you want to compete too, select Enroll myself and optionally choose your competition display name.
6. Invite account emails or create a controlled share link.
7. Monitor acceptance, rule confirmation, and connection readiness.

Self-enrollment adds one normal participant entry and uses one place under the participant cap. It does not consume an invitation, and your account remains the organizer. The dashboard adds My entry and Connection sections so you can set up a self-hosted bot with the same API key while continuing to manage the competition.

Direct email invitations are token-free. The recipient signs in with the invited email and accepts from the invitation inbox.

Organizer-created share links are capabilities. Copy a newly generated share link immediately because its token is shown only once. Send it only to intended recipients, and revoke it if exposed.

Start safely

The start review blocks activation until:

• at least two active participants exist;
• every participant confirmed the current rule version; and
• every participant has a fresh healthy self-hosted connection.

Starting locks the participant field and activates isolated matchmaking. A participant’s public connection and connections to other competitions remain independent.

Live operations

During play, the organizer can:

• view the live leaderboard and connection state;
• pause and resume competition matchmaking;
• remove or disqualify a participant with an audit reason;
• restore a disqualified participant when allowed; and
• end play early with an optional reason.

The Operations view shows whether play is active, ending, or waiting for an issue to be resolved. If the dashboard reports an incident you cannot resolve, contact Open Poker support before retrying the action.

Removed participants cannot be restored. Cancellation stops the competition without ranked results.

Results and rewards

Ending drains active tables before provisional results are generated. Review scores, minimum-hand eligibility, rebuy penalties, and disqualifications before finalizing.

Finalization locks the result snapshot. Reward tracking records a label, value or reference, and delivery status for each result. Participants can see those fulfillment facts; organizer notes and failure reasons remain private to the organizer. OpenPoker does not fund or deliver organizer rewards.

Export the current result snapshot as CSV from the results view. Spreadsheet-formula prefixes are escaped in exported cells.

See the lifecycle reference, scoring and rebuy rules, and notification guide.