The room
This is where your team actually plays.
A real table, not a chat window. Everyone sees the felt, the cards, the chips and each other, seated across teams by the rule. It runs in the browser, on a laptop or a phone.
Why poker
Ninety seconds of shared risk, with nothing real at stake.
Not for the cards. A hand of poker gives people who do not usually talk a reason to react to each other, and it does what a happy hour cannot: the game carries the evening, so nobody has to perform small talk.
Everyone is dealt in on the same footing. The person who has never played is dealt a tutorial hand first, and the format is built so a beginner enjoys the night as much as the shark.
Why play money
Nothing is wagered. The chips are score, not stakes.
No buy-ins, no prizes with cash value, nothing your legal team needs to think about. It is a game your company hosts for its own people, not a gambling product and not a casino night.
It is the whole reason a company can host this without legal or compliance weighing in.
The seating rule
People who work together least, sit together most.
That one rule is the product. Tables are seated automatically so the night engineers the conversations that do not happen at the office: your platform team meets your design team across the felt, not across a Slack thread.
As tables consolidate through the night, the people who came in together keep landing next to someone new. In a big company, colleagues are strangers. This is how they stop being.
How an online night works
You pick the evening. We run the room.
You schedule it
Pick a date and time. We email your team a link and a calendar hold. Nothing to install and nothing to roll out, they log in from a laptop or a phone.
Everyone logs in
At the set time your team arrives in the room together. Anyone who has never played is dealt a sixty-second tutorial hand first, so a beginner is comfortable before anything counts.
Play, tables mixed
Auto-seated across tables by the rule. Chips are score, not stakes. The deep start keeps everyone in for a while, and as players bust the tables consolidate, so people keep meeting someone new. Anyone knocked out stays in the room to rail the final table and chat.
A champion, and a room with stories
It plays down to a champion. Everyone gets a named recap with the final standings and league points, and the season leaderboard carries into the next night. You get an anonymized read on how the night landed, never anything about one person.
After the night
Everyone remembers it. Nobody gets exposed.
A champion, a named recap, and a season leaderboard the room will quote for weeks. What leaves the room for you is a read on how it landed, and only that.
Live standings
LEVEL 4 · 42 LEFTThe season board
Standings that carry to the next night
What you see as the organizer: how many people came, and how much your teams crossed over, for example every team ended the night having played against every other. No individual's attendance, hands, wins or losses ever leave the room.
What you're booking
A private tournament for your company, run start to finish for you.
Six to a few hundred people from your team, seated across mixed tables, one evening of ninety minutes to a couple of hours, your brand on the felt. We build the room, seat everyone by the rule, run the clock, and hand you the recap. Your team just logs in and plays.
Most teams start with a single night. When the standings and the stories carry into the next one, it becomes a recurring championship your company plays through the year.
Available now. It starts with one night.
What we are not
A real night your team plays, not a program you roll out.
Not a team-building workshop. No facilitator, no forced fun, no icebreakers. The game carries the night, and the silo-mixing happens on its own.
Not software to roll out. Nothing to install, license, or procure. We run the room; your team logs in from a laptop or a phone.
Not a program to sell up the chain. Whoever wants their team to have a great night can bring it in, a lead, a People partner, or an exec. Start with one night.
Book a night
Tell me the team and the month.
A real person reads every one of these. You will hear back the same day, usually with a date and the one-line rate. No sales sequence, no deck.
Prefer email? Write to ori@openseatclub.com and it reaches me straight away.