Official rules

All In is free. It runs for about three hours from 4pm on 11 December 2026, at a venue in central Liverpool. We'll email you the venue before the event.

Anyone 16 or over can register, except people who help run the tournament. We're mainly looking for students and people of student age.

Registration closes at 23:59 on 27 November 2026.

Teams have one or two people, and each person can be on one team only. Every team member must attend in person for the whole event.

Bring a laptop.

Everyone registers for themselves with the form on the event page. For a team of two, one of you starts a team when you register and the other joins it with the team code. Registering doesn't guarantee a place.

Places are selective. We choose based on everything you submit. What you've built, the puzzle and your CV are optional (one puzzle answer each), but they give us more to go on. A top puzzle score gets priority access.

Give accurate details. We can refuse or cancel a registration that isn't.

Each team has 90 minutes to build a poker bot in Python. The bots then play each other in simulated games, and the best-performing bots win.

Before the event, every team gets an information pack with the bot interface, a starter bot and a way to test it.

The game rules cover the poker played, how bots play, how they're scored and a twist. They stay secret until the build starts. They add to these rules, but can't change who can enter or the prizes.

You can use AI coding tools and public documentation to write your bot. Bring your own: we don't provide any.

Only bots play. No money is staked and the chips are worth nothing.

The game rules decide places.

We review the winning teams' code before paying prizes. A team that broke these rules or the game rules loses its prize.

We pay cash prizes by bank transfer within 30 days of the event. A team of two splits its prize equally.

The top teams also qualify for our planned national final. Its date and venue aren't set yet. If it can't go ahead, we'll tell qualifiers as soon as we know, and prizes won on the night still stand.

Every team that competes gets a certificate with its final rank.

We disqualify any team that works with another team, copies another team's code, interferes with the tournament systems or another team's work, or tries to gain an unfair advantage in any other way. We keep records of play and may review any team's code.

Treat everyone with respect. We can remove anyone who harasses others or disrupts the event.

Don't share the game rules or any other unreleased detail publicly until the event ends.

Nobody may bet on the results.

Raise any dispute with an organiser on the night, within the deadlines in the game rules. Our decisions on disputes, scoring and these rules are final.

You own the code you write. By submitting it, you let us run, test, review and replay it for the tournament, and show its hands, team name and results, during and after the event.

You confirm you have the right to submit everything in your bot. Code from the starter kit, open-source code you're allowed to use, and code written with AI tools are all fine. The starter kit and tournament systems stay ours.

We may take photos and video at the event and use them to promote it. Tell an organiser if you'd rather not appear.

How we handle your personal data is set out in the privacy notice.

You're responsible for your own belongings, including your laptop. We're not liable for their loss or damage.

If our systems fail during the tournament, we may rerun, adjust or cancel games. We're not liable for lost submissions or results.

Nothing in these rules limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit.

We may change these rules, or postpone or cancel the event. If we do, we'll email everyone registered.

These rules are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales deal with any dispute about them.

Questions: ollie@kernldigital.com.