Final decision on buying poker chips, options inside, opinions please!

[ClonexxSA]

Ok, it's time to decide just what I want to do as far as buying a decent set of poker chips for my little home games.

I have 3 different things in mind, and would like everyones input. I know I have to make up my own mind, but this forum has shown me a great deal of wisdom, so input from here is always greatly appreciated.

Preface :

I play small home games...6-7 people max normally. Sometimes tournament, sometimes ring. Tournaments I usually set up as per Lederer's video, but I bump it up to 1500 in chips just to give a little more time to it and more chips to play around with. This means 20 25s and 10 100s to each person.

Ring games of course require more chips then the tournament, but we almost always play NL, so we can use higher denominations to cut down on the amount of chips given out to each person. (IE : 2 $1 chips, 12 .50 cent chips and then 20 10 cent chips for a $10 10/20 cent NL ring game.)... I know..such small stakes..but we really only play for fun, not to make any kind of real money.

With that said, here are the options.

Option #1 :

Custom .95 cent chips from pokerchips.com. I would only be able to go with about 300 chips, full color, fully custom. I would split it 150/100/50 in all likelyhood. This is the most attractive option to me at the moment, only because I can get custom, color art, tailored to my tastes for such a cheap price. Cost is around $340 shipped without a case.


Option #2 :

Nevada Jack Composite chips. Quantity would be 250/150/100 in all likelyhood. I could afford a 500 chip set from here, which comes with case etc etc. Cost is approx. $370 shipped.

Option #3 :

Wait until October 7th and see if the new Desert Sands chips from NJ are the same price as the old NJ composites. If they are, then I could do the same as Option #2 for the same price, just no dead cowboy on the chips and much nicer edge spotting.


As I said, Option #1 is really the most appealing to me right now since the chips would be 100% custom to me, noone else anywhere would have the same chips as me and they would be something I can take great pride in. If I ever needed more chips down the line, I could always make another 300 chip order.

Options #2 and #3 both have their merits too. Namely more chips and no wait time whereas the pokerchips.com chips will have a wait time of at least 12 weeks, and probably more from what I have read. The wait isnt much of a problem though as I have a cheap set here that we use right now and can get by until the new chips come.


Everyones input is more then welcome here to give me pros and cons I may have missed. Any comments or opinions are greatly welcome.

Thanks everyone in advance.

[theWhale]

I had the same decision to make and I went with choice 1.

I got 160/90/50 since I have an octagonal table I can then give 20 chips to each person.

My other plan is to get the 300 nice ones buy some mega cheap chips to use as the low denomination tourney chips and blind chips (in your case the .10c chips).

A normal raise in .10/.20 is to .60 or .70 so you will need a lot of the .10c chips(plus its nice to have the illusion of big pots especially in a .10/.20 game). If you use your 150 chip color as the .10c chip you would have 150*.10 + 100*.5 + 50 * 1 = $115 which is probably not enough (8 players would only get $13.75 each.

So if you got 150 super diamond cheap ones and used them as .10c chips you would have 150*.10 + 150*.50 + 100 * 1 + 50 * 5 = alot

[ClonexxSA]

Well like I said our standard game is more like 5-6 people at most. So it would work out ok, since we really only play with $10 each or so.

I also have a cheap set of 500 of the 8g plain diamond cheapy chips which I can dig out if needed, but wouldnt want to if I can avoid it.

[theWhale]

You could use your 100 color as the .10 and your 150 as .50 if you had to as well.

Anyway as far as the chips themselves are concerned, for getting only 300 chips, pokerchips.com is hte only way to go for custom chips. I wanted some that were customonly to me so the other chips were never really a factor. If they had the colors I liked and cool edge spots it would be a real race but in the end pokerchips.com was the clear winner for me.

[ClonexxSA]

Well if I went with the pokerchips.com idea, I came up with a nice theme and such that I would enjoy seeing as chips. I would have to email them and ask them about it though as I dont know just how intricate they can get or how many designs and such you get for that price.

My idea is this :

I would like to do a heaven/hades/purgatory theme (3 different chip colors).

On one side of all chips would be something like "Afterlife Casino" or "Casino in the Afterlife" with the tagline "Death just gives you more time to gamble".

Now on one side of the chips I would like an image in between the casino name and the tagline. The heaven chip would be an angel or heavens gates, the hades chip would be a skull or a devil and the purgatory chip...well...I need to come up with an image for that..lol.

Then on the other side of the chips would be another image. The heaven chip would be a set of 7s, hades would of course be a set of 6s and purgatory I thought 2 jokers would be a good choice...

Any thoughts on that, if you think its too involved for them to do? Is there a limit on how many different images you can do?

I guess I would have to email them and ask...but if that could be done...well...lets just say I would probably be sold on the spot.

[theWhale]

I am pretty sure they can do that easily. They have in house artists that are pretty good. Should cost $315.

[RollaJ]

[ QUOTE ]
Custom .95 cent chips from pokerchips.com. I would only be able to go with about 300 chips, full color, fully custom. I would split it 150/100/50 in all likelyhood. This is the most attractive option to me at the moment, only because I can get custom, color art, tailored to my tastes for such a cheap price. Cost is around $340 shipped without a case.

[/ QUOTE ]
#1 is really the only choice that makes sense, may as well get total quality BECAUSE:
You will get the only quality you will really be happy about

In the future you will have more money and can always call back and add to your set, you cant really do that with the others.

I would suggest however that you get 4 denominations which will be better for tourneys go with a break down of
120
80
60
40

OR

120
70
60
40
10

Remember you can get 10 of a high value tourney chip and there is no extra art cost, and it will give you added flexability in your tourneys.....also if you add to your set they may not make you pay for art if its already on file

[ClonexxSA]

On their site it specifically says that in a 300 chip order, you can only have 3 different body colors. Do they not stick to that?

I am curious though as to what the reasoning is in that 4 chip type breakdown. It seems like 120 of the lowest chip wouldnt be enough in ring game situations. From my calculations on the amount of people we will have and the money we play for, 150/100/50 would work out just fine.

Am I missing something?

Also, what are your thoughts on that design idea? Good? Bad? Stupid?...and if I did a 4th chip, what would the theme of it be seeing as I have Heaven/Hell/Purgatory covered? Heh

[RollaJ]

oh, i didnt see that....skip what i said then, ur set up is good

[ClonexxSA]

I think im going to change the Purgatory chip to a Grim Reaper chip instead.

Why not Heaven, Hell and then the guy who puts you there? /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Still no comments on the design idea, is it that bad?

[TenPercenter]

[ QUOTE ]
im going to change the Purgatory chip to a Grim Reaper chip instead.


[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea. I like that better than Purgatory. At least you have a symbol now.

However, you're 2:1 on the evil:good symbols now. You ok with that?

Ten

[ClonexxSA]

I dont really look at Death or the Grim Reaper as evil.

I more look at it as a fact of life and just a neutral party doing their job...death in and of itself is not evil. (however much it does suck)

The media usually portrays the reaper as evil, but I have never viewed it that way.

(hahah listen to me like they talk about the reaper on the 6 o'clock news...you know what I mean /images/graemlins/smile.gif movies, tv shows, etc hehe )