How does the settlement calculation work?

Compute each player’s net (cash-out minus total buy-ins), then repeatedly match the largest debtor against the largest creditor until everyone is at zero. That greedy pass gets you close to the minimum number of transfers and is far easier to reason about than an exact optimisation — and at a table of six or eight, the difference is at most a transfer or two.

Does an app for tracking poker games have App Store issues?

A tracker that records buy-ins and cash-outs among friends is a ledger, not gambling, and does not involve real-money wagering inside the app. Keep it that way: no in-app chips purchased with money, no payment processing between players, and no links to gambling services. The moment you handle the money itself, you are in a completely different review category.

How to Build a Poker Night Tracker App with AI (2026)

What a poker night tracker app needs

Track buy-ins and rebuys during a game
Cash out each player and flag when the table does not balance
Minimal-transaction settlement — who pays whom
Lifetime results per player across games
Recurring player roster so setup takes seconds

The screens

Screen	What it does
Games	Past games with date, stakes, and biggest winner
Active Game	Player rows with buy-in buttons and running totals
Cash Out	Enter final stacks, see the balance check
Settle Up	Minimal list of payments to square the table
Leaderboard	Lifetime profit, games played, biggest win per player

The data model

Game: date, stakes, buyInAmount, status (active | settled)
Player: name, avatarColor
Seat: gameId, playerId, buyInCount, cashOutAmount
Transfer: gameId, fromPlayerId, toPlayerId, amount

The build prompt (copy this)

Paste this into ShipNative and it becomes a working React Native app with these screens, navigable in a live preview, in about two minutes:

“A poker night tracker for home games. The host picks players from a saved roster, sets the buy-in, and starts a game. During play, tapping a player adds a rebuy — one tap, no dialogs, because this happens mid-hand. At the end, the host enters each player’s final stack and the app checks that total cash-outs equal total buy-ins, showing the discrepancy clearly if they do not rather than silently accepting broken numbers. It then computes the minimum set of payments to settle the table — so four players owing each other resolve into two transfers, not six — and shows them as a simple list of "A pays B $X". A leaderboard tracks lifetime profit, games played, and biggest single win per player. All money is handled as integer cents, never floats. Screens: Games, Active Game, Cash Out, Settle Up, Leaderboard.”

Then iterate with small, screen-specific prompts (“make the primary button bigger”, “add an empty state”), preview on your own phone, and export the full Expo project whenever you want. The full method: how to build an app with AI.

How it makes money

Honestly, this is a hard app to charge for — it is used a few times a month by one person in the group. The realistic model is a one-time unlock ($3-5) for history beyond the last few games and stat exports, or free with no monetisation as a portfolio piece. Do not build a subscription for it; the usage frequency will not support one.

Implementation and the revenue math for every model: how to make money from an app. When you’re ready to ship: App Store and Google Play publishing guides.

Build it now

The prompt above is free to run at shipnative.dev — working poker night tracker app on your phone today, full code export, no credit card.

How to Build a Poker Night Tracker App with AI