Timer Guide

1 Two timers, one switch

Every game has the classic timer, and a newer BETA timer with custom layouts, break screens and multi-screen casting. Switch per game in check-in under Setup → Timer → Use BETA timer. The Timer button then opens whichever one is on, and you can switch back any time.

You can also make the new timer your default. The first time you open a tournament's check-in console you'll be asked once which timer you'd like; whichever you answer is remembered, and it's never asked again. After that, new games you set up start on the timer you chose, while each game's own switch still wins and games you've already configured are left alone. Change your mind any time under Settings → Tournament timer.

2 Choose what the display shows

On the same Setup → Timer pane, pick the layout this game's display uses: one of the built-ins, or any layout you have saved. Load a layout in the editor and the bar above it asks the only question that matters — Use this layout for your event — with a yes/no switch. Flip it on and that layout drives the game's display; flip it off and the display goes back to the default. When some other layout is already on the display, the bar names it, so switching on reads as a replacement rather than a first choice. The display follows your choice live, so you can change it mid-game and every connected screen updates without a reload.

A game with nothing chosen shows Default Layout, the built-in feature tour — which is also what the editor opens on for that game, so what you see while editing is what the TV is showing.

The chip set has its own tab next to Timer: the denominations in play with their colours, drawn on the display as a legend wherever the layout puts one. It rides along with a game preset, so a recurring game keeps its chips. Each chip can also carry a photo of the real thing instead of a flat colour.

3 Running the display

• Fullscreen: the round button in the bottom corner. It fades out when nothing is moving and comes back on any touch.
• iPad / iPhone: Safari cannot go fullscreen on its own. Tap Share → Add to Home Screen; opening the timer from that icon fills the screen, and the icon remembers this game.
• Staying awake: a phone or tablet showing the timer is kept awake automatically. If the device needs a tap first, a banner says so; tap anywhere once.
• Controls: if you can manage the game, a control tray appears (start/stop, level skip, add or remove a minute). Anyone else sees a clean display with no controls.
• Stays current: a display left open on a TV updates itself. When a new version of the site ships, every open timer screen notices within a few seconds and reloads on its own; you never need to walk over and refresh it.

4 More screens: the QR code

Add a QR code cell to a layout and any phone, tablet or TV browser that scans it opens the same timer, live and in sync, showing the same layout you chose. No account needed.

5 Building a layout

Open Timer Layouts from the site menu (or the Edit button next to the layout picker). The editor shows a live preview; everything is reachable two ways:

• Right-click anything, in the preview or in the structure tree, for its full menu: text, size, colour, font, alignment, padding, duplicate, delete, and screen-wide options like background image, screen shape and panel colours.
• Drag in the preview: drag a boundary between boxes to resize them, drag a box to move it. One Ctrl+Z undoes a whole drag.

A layout is rows and columns of cells. A cell's share of space is its weight; a cell with no weight hugs its content. Sizes are a share of the screen, so a layout built on a laptop fills a projector.

Fonts: every text cell has a Font setting in the Inspector and the right-click menu, each choice previewed in the dropdown itself. Eight are system looks (Serif, Monospace, Condensed, Wide, Heavy, Impact, Script, Comic) built from faces every device already has; the rest ship with the site — scoreboard and poster faces (Bebas Neue, Oswald, Anton, Orbitron), casino serifs (Cinzel, Playfair), a western saloon (Rye), a neon sign (Monoton), a brush script (Lobster), and Digital clock, a real 7-segment face made for <clock> and blinds cells (digits only — it is not for sentences). Bundled fonts load from this site, never a third party, and every choice has a same-shape fallback while it loads. A shared style can carry a font too, so one setting gives a whole design its typeface.

Padding is a box's inside margin: the gap between its edge and its own content, written CSS-style in the Inspector — one value for all sides, two for top/bottom & left/right, four for top right bottom left. Use vh (% of screen height) and vw (% of screen width) so the gap scales with the display. While the Padding field has focus, the preview marks the padding as green bands with a dashed line around the space the content actually gets, and the bands follow every keystroke, so you can watch the room appear before you commit. Hovering the field shows the same reference as a tooltip.

Scrolling: any text cell has a Scroll setting. Up rolls the content like film credits, and only when it is taller than its box: a short list sits still, a long one loops. Give the cell a weight, or it grows to fit its text and never has anything to roll. Left is a ticker that always moves, for a welcome line or a sponsor message along the bottom. Speed is a pace (slow, normal, fast), and the offset starts the loop part-way: set 0.5 on a second copy of a list and it shows the other half. Both stop for anyone who has asked their device for reduced motion.

Payout table: right-click a cell and choose Use a payout table instead. It draws every paid place as a row, place, dotted leader, reward, from the game's payout structure, so the layout only says where and how big. Pick the Monospace font for the classic card-room look, tick Only places still to be won to drop places already taken, and set Scroll to Up for a Remaining Places panel that rolls when the field is deep.

6 Elements: live values in text

Type <clock> in a cell and the display keeps it live. Any cell can mix plain text and elements: Round <round.num> of <round.total>. Names are grouped by subject with a dot, so related ones sort and read together. The editor's element picker lists them all with their current value. The families:

Styling one element apart from its line: select the cell and open Element styles in the inspector. It offers the elements present in that cell's text; pick one, and give it its own colour, bold, or a size relative to the line (0.7 means 70% of the surrounding text). The classic use, an ante that only shows on ante rounds and stands out when it does:

• Cell Text: <blinds.small> / <blinds.big>
• Add a variant with condition hasAnte and text <blinds.small> / <blinds.big> / <blinds.ante>
• Element styles → <blinds.ante> → orange, bold, size 0.7

No ante, plain blinds; ante rounds get the long form with just the ante highlighted. Element styles follow the element through variants, and they scale with the line if a long value makes the whole cell shrink.

You can also define your own fixed-text elements per layout (sponsor name, house rules line) under the editor's custom elements.

7 Conditions: show things only when they apply

Screens and cells can carry a condition. The simplest is a state: show this screen on break, show this cell when the game is over. Conditional screens are checked top to bottom and the first match wins, which is how a break screen takes over during breaks.

For anything beyond states, write an expression:

Comparisons are < <= > >= = !=, joined with and, or, not. The values you can test: round · blinds.small · blinds.big · blinds.ante · players.left · players.total · players.entries · players.buyIns · players.rebuys · players.addOns · players.out · chips.total · chips.avg · money.pot · table.count · table.seats · clock.minutes · clock.seconds, and the true/false states running paused onBreak preGame gameOver hasAnte hasRebuys.

Three more tell you what kind of screen is watching: mobile, tablet, desktop. With QR casting the same layout runs on every scanned device at once, so a cell with when: desktop puts the QR code on the TV only, and not mobile hides a dense stats block on phones. A phone stays a phone when rotated, and a touch-screen laptop counts as a desktop.

The final table, automatically: add a screen with the condition players.left <= 10 and players.left > 1 and put a seat map cell on it (right-click a cell → Use a seat map instead). The seat map draws every remaining player at their assigned seat — their avatar or initials, name, and seat number — using the table and seat assignments from check-in. The moment the field drops to ten, every screen switches to it by itself; the PCF built-in ships with this screen ready-made.

8 Variants: one cell, different looks

A cell can hold variants: alternate text, colour, background, bold or opacity, each behind its own condition. The first matching variant wins; with no match the cell shows its base look. That is how "show A, else B" works: the base is B, a variant with your condition is A. The built-in clock uses the same machinery to turn amber in the last minute and red at the end.

9 Artwork: on the screen, or on the box

There are two places a picture can live, and choosing right saves a lot of nudging:

• On a box (preferred for plates and panels): right-click any cell or container → Box image. The picture becomes that box's own background and moves, resizes and reflows with it, so a value can never drift off its plate, on any screen shape. Default fit is Stretch, because plate art is drawn for the box it decorates; Cover and Contain are there too. The PCF built-in is made this way: the felt is the screen, every glossy plate rides its own box. Art with a label or a mascot painted into it pairs with Padding (Building a layout): pad that side so the text starts clear of the painted part, and focus the Padding field to see exactly where the clearance sits.
• On the screen: right-click the screen → Screen background for the backdrop itself, a colour or a full-screen picture (felt, a poster, league branding).
• Picking an image opens your library first — everything you've already uploaded plus the built-in artwork (the PCF felt and plates are all reusable). Uploading a new file is the button in the corner, and re-using an existing image costs nothing against the daily upload allowance.

For a full-screen design that must keep its exact proportions anyway, the old tools remain: Screen shape locks the layout to the shape the artwork was drawn at and letterboxes elsewhere; Fit: Stretch distorts the picture to cover the layout's area instead of cropping; Panel colours switches the whole layout between painting its cell backgrounds and letting artwork show through.

10 Sounds & triggers

A trigger makes something happen the moment a condition becomes true: play a sound, flash the screen, speak a line, or take over the display with another screen for a few seconds. The Triggers bar sits right under the preview, next to the preview-state toggles — click it to fold the panel open. + Add trigger offers a list of ready-made triggers (level-change chime, one-minute warning, final-table fanfare…) to pick and tweak, or start from a blank one.

Each trigger is a condition plus a list of actions:

• Play sound — a dozen built-in tones (chime, horn, tick, casino…) that work everywhere, or upload your own MP3/WAV. Uploaded sounds live in your library and travel inside exports like images do.
• Show screen — jump to a named screen for 1–120 seconds, then return. Good for a "BLINDS UP" splash or a final-table fanfare page.
• Flash — a short amber pulse around the whole display.
• Announce — the display speaks the line out loud, with elements filled in: Blinds up: <blinds.now> says the actual numbers.

The conditions you'll reach for most:

• levelChange — true for an instant whenever the round number moves. The classic "new level" chime.
• clock.seconds <= 60 and running — the one-minute warning. It naturally re-arms each level.
• players.left <= 10 and players.left > 1 — final table reached. Pair it with once so it fires a single time.
• playerEliminated — someone was just knocked out (undoing an elimination stays silent). Pair it with the <players.lastOut> element: announce <players.lastOut> has been eliminated and the display speaks the actual name. <players.lastOutPlace> adds their finishing place.

Triggers fire on the change, never on the state: a screen that joins mid-game stays quiet about things that were already true, and a condition must go false and come true again before its trigger fires twice. Cooldown sets a minimum quiet time between fires; once per game means exactly that. The ▶ Test button on each trigger runs its actions in the preview immediately — the quickest way to audition a sound.

11 Sharing layouts

Export downloads a layout as a single .gntimer.json file with every image and sound embedded, so it carries its own artwork and audio. Import reads one back in, re-uploads the media here, and saves it as a new layout in your list. That's the way to move a design between installs or share it with another host.