PokerTH is an open-source Texas Hold'em poker game and engine written in C++ with Qt, for players who want to play against computer opponents or against other people over the internet, and for hosts who want to run the multiplayer server themselves.

What it is

PokerTH is a poker game written in C++ with Qt, published on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 licence and filed in this registry under Miscellaneous / Gaming. The project has existed since 2006, carries 655 stars, 252 forks and 4 open issues, and its latest release is 2.1.9. It implements the popular Texas Hold'em variant for 2 to 10 players: a single player can face up to nine computer opponents, or real people can meet on the official server at pokerth.net, or on any dedicated server the host runs. The README is explicit that the game carries no ads, no real-money gambling and no tracking, with the project homepage and forum at pokerth.net serving as the community hub.

The concrete problem it addresses is multiplayer card play that does not depend on a commercial, advertising-funded or gambling platform. Players who want private tables host their own pokerth_dedicated_server binary, and anyone willing to run the heavier pokerth_official_server gets the user database that pokerth.net itself uses. Internally the repository builds two desktop clients that speak the same protocol and share the whole engine, networking and database layer below the GUI. The current client is pokerth_qml-client, a Qt Quick / QML application in src/gui/qt6-qml that scales from phone to desktop across all platforms; the classic pokerth_client in src/gui/qt is built on Qt Widgets, and 2.1.9 is its final release. In that sense the QML client supersedes the long-standing Widgets client while the engine underneath remains shared.

Key capabilities

• Texas Hold'em for 2–10 players, played single player against bots, over a local network, or over the internet.
• Tournament-style games with start money, blind levels raised by hand count or by minutes, manual blind orders, action timeouts and configurable GUI speed.
• Public, registered-only, invite-only and ranking games, each with optional spectators.
• A lobby containing the player list, the game list, chat, emoji reactions and private messages that persist per account.
• Opt-in chat translation on demand, documented in docs/third_party_services.md.
• Appearance options: 20 table themes, 11 card decks, several card backsides, and theme import/export as ZIP archives.
• 29 languages with the full UI translated, on Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.
• Two server binaries: pokerth_dedicated_server for anybody who wants to host games, and pokerth_official_server, which adds the user database used by pokerth.net.

Who uses it and how

• Solo players run Texas Hold'em against up to nine bots locally, with no account, server or network connection required.
• Friend groups and clubs that need private tables use invite-only or registered-only games on a self-run pokerth_dedicated_server, and can allow observers as spectators.
• Community hosts running public or ranking games deploy pokerth_official_server so that accounts and private messages persist in a user database rather than living only in the lobby session.
• Desktop users install ready-made packages: Flatpak net.pokerth.PokerTH, Snap pokerth, AppImage, .deb or portable ZIP on Linux; an installer on Windows that contains both clients; a DMG on macOS that also contains both clients.
• Android users install the APK from the PokerTH F-Droid repository at https://www.pokerth.net/fdroid/repo.
• Release engineering runs through reproducible Docker images and GitHub Actions workflows rather than by hand, for example the MinGW cross build in docker/windows.

Getting started

Ready-made packages for every platform are linked from pokerth.net/download, including Flatpak net.pokerth.PokerTH, Snap pokerth, AppImage, .deb and portable ZIP on Linux, an installer for Windows, a DMG for macOS and an Android APK from the F-Droid repo. To build from source, configure with CMake in Release mode using Ninja, build the required target, then run sudo cmake --install ./build, or run bash clean_build.sh first for a clean build that places the test certificate and data directory inside build/.

How it compares

No other poker or card-game project is named in the facts supplied for this page, and no list of paid products that PokerTH replaces was provided, so it stands alone in this registry on that evidence. The distinguishing points that can be stated are its own: AGPL-3.0 licensing, an engine that runs fully offline against bots, and a server binary that a host can operate instead of depending on a single official service.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate the pokerth_dedicated_server or pokerth_official_server binary and its account database, and anyone building from source needs to supply Qt 6.7.0 or newer (6.9.2 LTS recommended), Boost 1.83 or newer with thread, filesystem, date_time, program_options, iostreams, asio, regex, random and uuid, Protocol Buffers 2.3.0 or newer with protoc at build time and libprotobuf at runtime, OpenSSL, CMake 3.15 or newer and a C++23 compiler. Players who want a commercial client with official tournament circuits or real-money play should not pick this, because the README states there is no real-money gambling and no advertising. Anyone expecting the classic Qt Widgets desktop interface to keep receiving features should also look elsewhere, since 2.1.9 is its final release, and iOS users must build from source via build_ios_qml.sh because there is no App Store build yet.

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -S . -B ./build -G Ninja
cmake --build ./build --config Release --target all
sudo cmake --install ./build

cmake --build ./build --target pokerth_dedicated_server
./build/bin/pokerth_dedicated_server