Buy in Question

[nutstraight]

Does anyone see a reason to give more chips that the actual amount bought in. Ex. $50 gets $500 chips. I have always just given dollar for dollar, but I've read about others do 4 for 1 or variations or that. Can anyone explain the pro's and cons?

[Arnie]

Well for tournament poker it makes sense, more action for less $$, works out well for home games especially when people new to the game are playing.

as far as doing 4 to 1, i think thats retarded. in reality what you are doing is decreasing the value of the chips. so if you want to buy-in with 50 bucks but want to have more than 50 chips (1 dollar a chip) make chips worse .25c or .50c. Usually make the smallest chip your lowest small blind for the night. So for .25/.50 Holdem your lowest chip value would be .25c

just my .02c