Terms of service

01Who you’re dealing with

Poks is built and operated by Aidan Warriner, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Poks is not yet a registered company; for now you’re contracting with an individual. When Poks is incorporated, these terms will be updated to name the company, and we’ll tell you before that happens.

Throughout this document, “we”, “us” and “Poks” mean the above. “You” means you — whether you’re hosting a game, joining one, or just reading the website.

Contact: aidan@poks.app — one address for everything, support and legal alike. If you need our postal address for a formal notice, email and ask.

02What Poks is

Concretely, Poks lets you:

• set up a game and share a link so people can say whether they’re coming;
• record the buy-in amount and blind levels you and your players agreed between yourselves;
• keep a running note of buy-ins, rebuys and cash-outs as the host enters and confirms them;
• calculate, from those entries, the smallest set of payments that would balance the night;
• keep a log of what was entered, and a history of past games.

Everything Poks shows you is derived from what you and the people you play with type in. It is a faster, tidier version of a notebook and a calculator. It is not a source of truth about what happened at your table.

03What Poks is not

This section matters more than the rest, so it’s stated plainly and it’s binding:

• ×Poks is not a gambling operator. We don’t run games. We don’t decide who plays, set or suggest stakes, put up prizes, provide a prize pool, or take part in anybody’s game. We don’t recruit players, we don’t open games to the public, and we hold no gambling licence because we don’t do anything that needs one. Whether a game happens, who’s at the table and what it’s played for is settled entirely by the people involved, before Poks is used and without any input from us.
• ×No game is ever played through Poks. No cards are dealt, no hand is played, no bet is placed, no wager is accepted and no outcome is generated by our software. Poker happens at a physical table between people who chose to be there. Poks records the figures those people enter and does arithmetic on them.
• ×Poks never receives, holds, transfers or processes money. Not the buy-ins, not the pot, not the settlement. No funds ever pass through Poks or any account we control. We are not a payment service provider, a money remitter, an escrow agent, or a custodian of anyone’s cash, and we do not provide payment services within the meaning of the EU Payment Services Directive or the Dutch Wet op het financieel toezicht.
• ×Poks takes no share of anything. No rake, no commission, no percentage, no cut of any pot. Our only possible revenue is a subscription fee paid to us directly for software features, and there is none today.
• ×Poks is not a bank, a bookkeeper, or an accountant. Nothing in the app is financial, tax or accounting advice, and our records are not built to satisfy any tax or regulatory obligation you might have.
• ×Poks does not decide who pays whom. It calculates one arithmetically efficient way of settling the figures you entered. Whether anyone actually pays, and whether the figures were right, is entirely between you and the people you played with.

04Accepting these terms

These terms form an agreement between you and us. You accept them when you create an account, when you join a game, or when you join the waitlist on this website — in each case by an explicit confirmation, not by accident. If you don’t accept them, don’t use Poks.

If you’re a host

You accept these terms when you create an account. You’re also responsible for the game you set up, as set out in section 6.

If you’re a guest player

You can join a game with just a link and a first name, without creating an account. Before you join, the join screen asks you to confirm that you’re 18 or over and that you accept these terms and our privacy notice. You do that by ticking the box — one tap, and you’re accepting only for yourself.

We ask you rather than relying on your host, because these terms are between you and us and because we’d rather you saw them than took someone’s word for it.

What a host confirms

If you host a game, you also confirm to us that you have a genuine reason to enter the details of the people you invite, and that you haven’t added anyone who doesn’t know they’re in your game. This sits alongside each player’s own acceptance — it doesn’t replace it.

The other documents

Our privacy policy and cookie policy cover this website. The Poks app has its own privacy notice, covering accounts, player names, game figures and the event log; it’s provided in the app and we won’t open the beta before it’s published. Those documents form part of the same agreement as these terms.

We keep dated copies of every version of these terms. If you want the version you accepted, email us and we’ll send it.

05Age and eligibility

Poks is for people aged 18 and over. If you’re under 18, you may not create an account, join a game, or join the waitlist. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we’ll close it and delete the data.

You also confirm that nothing in law prevents you from entering into this agreement, and that you’re not using Poks on behalf of someone who is barred from using it.

06Your game is your responsibility

You decide whether to play poker, with whom, for what stakes, and where. We have no part in that decision and no way of knowing what you’ve agreed. So:

• You are responsible for making sure your game is lawful where you are, and for obtaining any licence, permission or exemption your activity requires. Gambling law differs sharply between countries, and sometimes between regions of the same country.
• You are responsible for your own tax position on anything you win or lose.
• You are responsible for how you treat the people you play with — including keeping to whatever you agreed about stakes, rebuys and paying up.
• You will not use Poks in connection with any activity that is unlawful where you are. If you’re unsure whether your game is lawful, get advice before you use Poks for it, not after.

Conditions on how you use Poks

Poks is built for private games among people who know each other. So, whatever the law where you are, you agree that any game you record in Poks:

• is private — limited to people you or another participant invited, and not open to the general public;
• isn’t advertised or promoted outside that group;
• earns the host nothing from running it — no rake, no commission, no share of any pot, no entry, table or seat fee, and no charge for taking part beyond the stake each player puts into the game itself;
• isn’t run as a business or in a commercial venue.

These aren’t arbitrary. In most of Europe they’re roughly the line between a private game and one that needs a licence, and Poks is not a tool for the second kind. If your game doesn’t meet these conditions, Poks isn’t for it, and we may close your account.

07The numbers are yours

Poks does arithmetic on figures that people type in. It cannot know whether those figures are right.

• We don’t warrant that anything in the app is accurate. Not the buy-in totals, not the rebuy counts, not the cash-outs, not the settlement, not the history, not the stats.
• The event log records what was entered and when — not what actually happened. It’s designed not to be quietly edited, which makes it a useful record of the entries. It is not our confirmation that those entries were correct, and we make no claim about what weight anyone should give it.
• The settlement calculation is a suggestion. It’s one efficient way of squaring the figures given. It is not a determination of what anyone owes, and it creates no debt, obligation or entitlement between anybody.
• Disputes about money are between the people who played. We are not a party to them, we won’t arbitrate them, and we can’t adjust anyone’s balance to resolve one. If the numbers are wrong, fix them with the people who were there.
• Check the maths before anyone pays. Software has bugs, people mistype, and a wrong figure entered produces a confident wrong answer.

08Money never touches Poks

Settlement in Poks is peer-to-peer by design. When the app says one player should pay another, that payment happens entirely outside Poks — in cash, or through whatever banking or payment app those two people choose. We are not involved, we don’t see it, and we can’t move it.

It follows that:

• we don’t guarantee that anyone will pay what the app suggests they should;
• marking a payment as “paid” in Poks is one player’s assertion, not confirmation from a bank or from us;
• we can’t recover money for you, reverse a payment, or hold funds while a dispute is sorted out;
• if someone doesn’t pay you, that’s a matter between you and them.

09Accounts

Hosts need an account. Keep your login details to yourself, use a password you don’t use elsewhere, and tell us at aidan@poks.app if you think someone else has got into your account.

You’re responsible for what happens under your account. Give us accurate details when you sign up, and keep them current — if your email address stops working, we can’t reach you about your own data.

One person, one account. Don’t share an account, don’t create an account for somebody else without their knowledge, and don’t impersonate anyone.

10Acceptable use

Use Poks for what it’s for. Specifically, don’t:

• use it for, or in connection with, anything unlawful where you are;
• use it for a game that doesn’t meet the conditions in section 6 — in particular, don’t take a rake, a commission, a share of the pot or an entry fee from a game you record in Poks, and don’t use it for public, advertised or commercially run games;
• enter figures you know to be false, or use the app to mislead the people you play with;
• use it to harass, threaten, defraud or pressure anyone, including over money;
• enter other people’s personal data without a proper reason to, or add someone to a game who hasn’t agreed to be there;
• try to break, overload, probe or circumvent the service, its security, or any limit we’ve set;
• reverse-engineer, decompile or copy the software, except where law expressly permits it;
• scrape or bulk-extract data, or use automated means to access the service beyond normal use;
• resell, sublicense or commercially redistribute access to Poks;
• upload malware, or anything designed to interfere with the service or other people’s use of it.

We may remove content and suspend or close accounts that break these rules — see section 15.

11Beta terms

Poks is in beta. It’s free, it’s unfinished, and you’re using it early on purpose. While it’s in beta:

• It’s provided “as is” and “as available.” We don’t promise it will be free of bugs, stay online, or perform to any particular standard. Beyond the rights the law gives you regardless — see below — we give no additional warranties.
• We may reset or delete beta data between builds. Game history, settlements and stats may be wiped. We’ll warn you in the app before we do it deliberately, but accidents happen in beta software. Don’t rely on Poks as your only record of anything that matters — if a night’s figures are important to you, keep your own copy.
• Features may change, pause or disappear. Where a change would significantly affect how you can use Poks, we’ll tell you in advance and you can stop using it and delete your account without cost. Nothing you see in beta is a promise it will exist at launch or stay free.
• We may end the beta, or your access to it. Except where you’ve seriously broken these terms, we’ll give you reasonable advance notice and, on request, provide the content you put into Poks free of charge, within a reasonable time, in a commonly used machine-readable format.
• Feedback is a gift. If you send us ideas, suggestions, bug reports or feature requests, we can use them freely to develop Poks, without owing you payment, credit or confidentiality. You keep any rights you already had in what you sent; you’re just not charging us for the idea. Don’t send us anything you consider confidential or commercially valuable.

12Paid features

There are none right now. Poks is free during the beta and we’re not taking payments.

We do intend to charge for some features later — extra stats and history for players, tournament tools and automation for hosts. When we do, we’ll publish the prices, update these terms, and tell you before anything becomes payable. You will never be charged without agreeing to it first, and paid features will come with the consumer rights that apply to digital services in the EU, including a statutory right of withdrawal and clear cancellation terms.

The core of Poks — running a cash game, recording buy-ins, settling the night — is intended to stay free.

13Your data and content

What you put into Poks stays yours. Game details, player names, figures, notes — you own them, and we don’t claim any ownership.

To run the service we need permission to use them, so you grant us a licence to store, process, copy and display your content for the purpose of operating Poks and providing it to you and the people you’ve shared a game with. That licence lasts as long as we hold the content and ends when it’s deleted. It’s limited to running the product.

Aggregated data

We may also produce and use anonymised, aggregated statistics from activity across Poks — things like typical pot sizes, session lengths or rebuy patterns — to improve the product, and to write about home poker in general. Three limits we intend to keep: the data must be genuinely aggregated across many games; it must not identify you, your group, or any individual game; and we won’t publish your figures, your name, or anything traceable back to your table. The app’s privacy notice describes this in data protection terms and gives you the right to object.

Other people’s data

If you’re a host, you’ll be entering other people’s names and results. Only enter what you need, only about people who know they’re in your game, and don’t use Poks to keep records about someone who’s asked you not to. How we handle personal data is set out in the privacy policy.

14Our intellectual property

The Poks software, name, logo, design and content belong to us. You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the app for its intended purpose for as long as these terms apply to you. It ends if your account ends, in the circumstances set out in section 15. That’s it — no rights to the code, the brand or the design beyond using the product as it’s offered.

Don’t use our name or logo to suggest we endorse you, your game, or anything else, without asking first.

15Suspension and ending

You can leave whenever

Stop using Poks, or delete your account, at any time and for any reason. Deleting your account removes your personal data as described in the app’s privacy notice, and you can ask us for a copy of your content first.

One wrinkle worth being straight about: a game involves several people, and each of them has their own record of the night. If you delete your account, we remove your personal data, but the other players’ own results from games you shared may remain in their history. The app’s privacy notice explains how we handle this and how to object.

When we can suspend or close an account

We may suspend or close your account, or remove content, if you break these terms, if we’re required to by law, or if your use puts other users, us, or the service at real risk. We’ll tell you the reason, and unless the problem is serious we’ll give you notice and a chance to put it right first. Where it is serious — unlawful use, fraud, or harm to other people — we may act immediately, and we’ll still tell you why.

We may also stop offering Poks altogether. If we do, we’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice where we reasonably can, and provide your content free of charge in a commonly used machine-readable format on request.

16Our liability

Poks is a free tool built by one person. The limits below reflect that. They are written to go as far as Dutch law permits, and no further.

What we’re not liable for

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for:

• figures being wrong, whether because someone mistyped them, misremembered, or because of a bug;
• money you don’t get paid, or money you pay that you shouldn’t have;
• arguments, fallings-out or lost friendships arising from a game or a settlement;
• data being lost, reset or unavailable, particularly during the beta;
• the service being down, slow or broken;
• any consequence of a game being unlawful where it took place;
• indirect or consequential loss — lost profits, lost opportunities, or losses at the table.

Where liability is capped

Where we are liable despite the above, and subject to the carve-outs below, our total liability to you for all claims connected with these terms is limited to the greater of €100 or the total amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the event that caused the loss. During the beta, when Poks is free, that means €100.

What is outside these limits altogether

If you’re using Poks for business

If you use Poks in the course of a trade, business or profession rather than as a consumer, and your unlawful use of it leads to a claim against us from a third party or an authority, you’re responsible for the reasonable costs we incur as a result, to the extent they were caused by your conduct rather than ours. We’ll tell you promptly about any such claim and won’t settle it without talking to you first.

This paragraph does not apply to consumers, who owe us nothing beyond what Dutch law would require of them anyway.

17App store terms

If you install Poks through the Apple App Store or Google Play, or test it through TestFlight or Google Play testing, some extra terms apply because those platforms require them.

• This agreement is between you and us, not between you and Apple or Google. They’re not a party to it, and they aren’t responsible for Poks or its content.
• The licence in section 14 is limited to using Poks on Apple-branded products that you own or control, as permitted by the App Store’s usage rules — except that Poks may be accessed by other accounts you’re permitted to share it with under Family Sharing or volume purchasing. You may not distribute it over a network where it could be used by several devices at once.
• Apple and Google have no obligation to provide support or maintenance for Poks. Support requests go to aidan@poks.app.
• If Poks fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple may refund the purchase price — which for a free beta is nothing. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation for Poks, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty are our responsibility, not Apple’s.
• We, not Apple or Google, are responsible for addressing any claim relating to Poks, including: product liability claims; any claim that Poks fails to conform to an applicable legal or regulatory requirement; any claim arising under consumer protection, privacy or similar legislation, including in connection with the use of any health or fitness framework; and any claim that Poks infringes a third party’s intellectual property rights.
• You confirm that you’re not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as a terrorist-supporting country, and that you’re not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this section and may enforce its terms against you.
• You must also comply with the applicable terms of Apple’s or Google’s own agreements when using Poks.

None of this reduces the rights you have as a consumer under Dutch or EU law, and nothing in this section overrides section 16.

18Changes to these terms

We’ll update these terms as Poks changes. We won’t change them arbitrarily — a change needs a real reason, and in practice that means one of these: the app itself has changed, paid features have arrived, Poks has become a company, the law or a platform’s rules have changed, or we’ve found a problem with the current wording.

If a change materially affects your rights or obligations, we’ll tell you in the app or by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, and we’ll say what’s changing. If you don’t accept it, you can stop using Poks and delete your account at no cost, and we’ll provide your content as described in section 11. Continuing to use Poks after the change takes effect means you accept the new version.

Deciding not to accept a change doesn’t take away any other right you have — including your statutory rights and any claim you already had. The version number and date at the top always reflect the current text, and we keep dated copies of previous versions.

19Law and disputes

Dutch law applies to these terms and to any dispute arising from them.

If you’re a consumer, choosing Dutch law doesn’t take away the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in.

Which court

If you’re a consumer, you can always bring a claim in the court for the place where you live, and we will only bring a claim against you there. Nothing in these terms limits that. If neither of us is a consumer, the courts of Amsterdam, The Netherlands have jurisdiction.

Talk to us first

Email aidan@poks.app before anything formal. Nearly everything is fixable by a person reading a complaint properly, and we’d rather do that than litigate. We’ll respond within 14 days. We’re not currently affiliated with any dispute resolution board (geschillencommissie); if that changes, we’ll say so here.

The rest of the small print

• Fixing input mistakes. Before you confirm an entry, the app shows you what you’ve typed and lets you correct it. If a figure is already recorded and it’s wrong, the host can correct it — and the log will show that it was changed.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is unenforceable or void, that part simply doesn’t apply and the rest still stands. We won’t treat a struck-out term as replaced by something narrower.
• Waiver. Not enforcing a term straight away doesn’t mean we’ve given it up.
• Transfers. You can’t transfer your rights under these terms without asking us. We can’t transfer this agreement to someone else without your agreement either. If Poks is incorporated, sold or restructured, we’ll tell you beforehand and ask — and if you’d rather not continue, you can delete your account and your data instead.
• What survives. Sections 7, 8, 13, 14, 16 and 19 continue to apply after you stop using Poks, for anything that happened while you were.
• These terms plus the privacy and cookie policies and the app’s privacy notice are our agreement about Poks. That doesn’t stop you relying on anything we’ve told you elsewhere — we’re responsible for what we say about our own product.

20Contact

Related: privacy policy · cookie policy.