Old Timer – The Perfect Texas Hold ‘Em Blinds Timer

Last week, I organized and co-hosted a university poker tournament. This wasn’t your regular “call several friends over to play” event. We had 24 players and numerous spectators. Rules were discussed, set up and enforced; everything was planned down to the tee. And since this tournament was going to last for 8 weeks, we took everything very seriously.

The game was Texas Hold ‘Em, without a shadow of doubt the most famous gameplay variant spawned. It is easy to learn, simply addictive but inexplicably difficult to master. I digress.

During the tournament, we faced a minor speed bump. In Texas Hold ‘Em, blinds increase periodically and since this was a tournament, we decided that the blinds would go up every 15 minutes. Sure, that sounded sensible at the time but there wasn’t a clock in the room and none of us was wearing a watch. We had to resort to using our mobile phones to tell us the time. Every so often, one of us yelled, “Time to double the blinds, guys!” Personally, I considered that pretty inconvenient — especially so when you’re in a competition, it was distracting.

At the end of the tournament, one of the players suggested that we should bring a clock to time the blind increments. My mind immediately went, “What? A clock?” My innate geekiness wouldn’t allow myself to succumb to utilizing what I can only describe as “wall art”. I was positive that there was an app, somewhere out there in vastness of the internet, made for this specific purpose.

And there is. It sure took me a rather long time to find it, though.

It’s called Old Timer (a cunning play on words, I have to admit) and it’s available for Mac and PC because it runs on Flash. Ironically, I didn’t actually set out to look for a poker timer, per se — to be brutally honest, I didn’t think that an app like that existed. I initially searched for a timer application that would display a pre-set countdown and play an alarm once it reached zero. That proved much harder to find.

Old Timer is the perfect companion to a self-hosted, homebrew poker game. As soon as I launched the app, it gave me the option of running in full-screen. Instantly, I knew this was the one I was looking for.

The app is immensely simple to use. You are allowed three different modes of gameplay — all day, average or multi-table. Since my tournament consisted of several different tables, that was the mode I selected. Then, I had to enter my customized blind increment levels, the number of players, length of each round before the blinds double, cost of buy-in and rebuys, and finally the starting amount of chips distributed to each player; then hit Play.

Cleverly, Old Timer calculates the total number of chips in play and how much there is in the pot. But what I’m really pleased with is the timer! It’s a gorgeous white on black display with large fonts that everyone can see from across the room. What’s more, it shows how much the blinds should be at any given moment. Oh yes, it pays to be a geek!

In the final minute before the blinds increase, Old Timer plays a short soundclip to indicate that there is less than a minute left. It also displays the values of the blinds in the subsequent round. When the timer reaches zero, there is a wonderfully posh indication that new blinds are in play; and the timer automatically resets itself for the new round. It’s just perfect.

Old Timer will work on both Mac and Windows and there is no other way to say this – it is the perfect blinds timer for a home hold’em game. If you know any better texas hold em blinds timer, I’m all ears; suggest them in the comments.