GGPoker leaderboards: how points are counted and when they’re worth chasing

GGPoker leaderboards are daily races that run on almost every game on the site. You don’t sign up: every real-money hand or game earns points automatically, there is a separate board for each format and stake level, and the best players of the day share the prize pool. Points come from what you play, not from what you win, so a losing session can still pay.

The details differ by format, and the timing is set in GGPoker’s own time zone, UTC-8. This guide explains how points are counted in cash games, Rush & Cash and Spin & Gold, when Happy Hour and the daily reset fall where you live, and when chasing a leaderboard is worth it.

How GGPoker leaderboards work

Each leaderboard covers one format at one stake level for one GGPoker day. Hold’em cash has separate boards for 6-max and 9-max tables; Omaha has separate boards for PLO, PLO5 and PLO6. Rush & Cash, All-in or Fold, Short Deck, Spin & Gold, Flip & Go and Mystery Battle Royale have their own. You can climb several at once: a session on two formats earns points on both.

The race closes at the end of the GGPoker day, midnight UTC-8, and a new one starts at zero. Prizes are paid in P$, Poker Dollars, the promotional currency GGPoker used to call C$, and they show in your account balance. The number of paid places and the scoring rules are listed on the promotion banner at every table, which is the place to check before a session.

Which games have a leaderboard

The line-up changes little from month to month, but the prize pools are set each month. The table shows the daily pools during our check (October 2026), when GGPoker ran about $7.5 million in daily leaderboards for the month.

Each daily pool is split across stake levels, so a single board at the micro stakes pays far less than the headline number. The split is on the banner at the table.

How points are counted

Every format scores differently, and the differences decide which play the board rewards.

Cash games

In regular Hold’em and Omaha, you earn points for every hand that is raked, and the number of points per hand depends on the stakes: the bigger the game, the more each hand is worth. Hands that end before rake is taken earn nothing. In practice the board rewards volume at your normal stake: more tables and more hours mean more points.

Rush & Cash

Rush & Cash, GGPoker’s fast-fold format, scores actions instead of raked hands. To see how quickly that adds up, take one hand: you call a raise preflop, call a bet on the flop, then raise the turn and win a Cash Drop pot. The chart shows what each action is worth.

In that hand you collect 3 + 3 + 5 = 11 points for the actions and 10 for the Cash Drop, 21 in total, but the cap stops you at 20. A hand you fold before the flop earns 1 point. That gap is the reason the Rush & Cash board tempts players into calls they wouldn’t otherwise make, which is covered further down.

Spin & Gold

The Spin & Gold board uses Gold points, which depend on the buy-in and your finishing place: 12 for winning a $1 game, 8 for second, 4 for third, scaled up and down by the buy-in. The full table is in our guide to Spin & Gold. Gold points scale exactly with the buy-in, so the board rewards the number of games and how often you finish high, not the stake itself.

All-in or Fold and other formats

All-in or Fold, Short Deck, Flip & Go and Mystery Battle Royale have their own scoring, which GGPoker shows on each promotion banner rather than in one public table. Check the banner at the table before you play for the board, because the rules for these smaller formats change more often.

Happy Hour and reset times in your time zone

Happy Hour runs every day from 22:00 to 23:59 UTC-8, the last two hours of the GGPoker day. During our check (October 2026), points earned in that window were multiplied by 1.5 on all leaderboards. UTC-8 does not change for summer, so the local times shift when your own clocks do.

For European players, Happy Hour falls in the early morning, which suits few people. For players on the US West Coast it is late evening, which is one reason the boards at those hours fill up with points quickly.

How to check where you stand

You never need to guess your position. The promotion banner at the table opens the current standings for that format and stake, where you can find your rank and points and scroll down to the last paid place. Three numbers on that screen are worth a look before you decide how long to play.

• The last paid place. Compare it with your points per hour. If you earn 400 points an hour and the last paid place has 1,500 with six hours to go, you are on course; if it has 6,000, you are not.
• Yesterday’s final cut-off. Boards fill up in a similar pattern each day, so yesterday’s last paid place is a fair guide to today’s, with weekends usually busier.
• The prize at your likely finish. Not the top prize. The gap between 1st and 50th on a micro-stakes board is large, and most regulars finish nearer the bottom of the paid places.

The standings also show the time left in the GGPoker day, which is the number to watch around Happy Hour. A player who sits just outside the paid places at 21:30 UTC-8 can often climb in by playing the last two hours at 1.5 times the points.

Which board suits which player

Because each format scores differently, the same hours at the tables earn very different results on different boards.

A multi-tabling regular does best on the cash and Rush & Cash boards, where points follow volume. A recreational player who logs on for an hour after work rarely reaches a paid place on those, but can on the Spin & Gold board at a low buy-in, where a couple of wins in a short session count for a lot. Formats with smaller pools, such as Short Deck and Flip & Go, have fewer players chasing them, so the cut-off is often lower even though the prizes are smaller. Look at two or three boards for your stake before picking the one to play for.

Are leaderboards worth chasing?

A leaderboard is extra money for play you would do anyway. It turns into a cost the moment you change how you play to get points.

It is worth it when the board matches your normal stake and volume. If you already play four tables of Rush & Cash for two hours a day, look at yesterday’s final standings on the banner: if your usual point total would have reached a paid place, an extra half hour on a good day can be worth it.

It costs you when you add hands or actions only for points. Take Rush & Cash at $0.10/$0.25. Each call instead of a fold earns 2 extra points. If those extra calls lose even 0.1 big blinds each on average, that is $0.025 per call, and 1,000 of them cost $25 for 2,000 points. Check what 2,000 points were worth on yesterday’s board before you make that trade; at most levels it pays far less.

Moving up in stakes to collect more points per hand. Rake per hand and the size of your mistakes grow with the stake, and a lower win rate at the bigger game usually costs more than a mid-table leaderboard prize pays. Play the board at the stake where you already win.

Leaderboards and Ocean Rewards stack

The same hands that earn leaderboard points also earn Ocean Rewards, GGPoker’s rakeback programme: 100 Tide Points for every $1 of rake or tournament fees, whatever happens on the board. A leaderboard prize is on top of that, not instead of it. The details are in our guide to GGPoker rakeback, and how much rake GGPoker takes per hand is in GGPoker rake.

Daily Freebie tickets and freerolls are a separate promotion; our page on the GGPoker no deposit bonus covers them. Tournament series often add their own leaderboards for the length of the series, described in GGPoker tournaments.

GGPoker leaderboards FAQ

The rest of GGPoker’s promotions and games are in our GGPoker review.