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View Full Version : Why do they have those big piles of chips at the WSOP?

betgo
11-01-2005, 11:36 PM
In the tournaments I play in, they remove the small denomination ones. It looks like they have thousands of them. It seems like it would be difficult to count out. Do they do that to make people feel like winners or because it looks good on TV?
daryn
11-01-2005, 11:58 PM
i think it's just because the field is humongous
manpower
11-02-2005, 12:01 AM
10k / person * 5800 people = 58,000,000 in chips
Dynasty
11-02-2005, 01:34 AM
They do color up the chips regularly.

I'm sure Harrahs and ESPN like the chip leaders to have lots of chips in front of them. It's a good visual.
Temp Hutter
11-02-2005, 08:47 AM
[ QUOTE ]
In the tournaments I play in, they remove the small denomination ones. It looks like they have thousands of them. It seems like it would be difficult to count out. Do they do that to make people feel like winners or because it looks good on TV?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because there is an ante you have to keep smaller chips in play until the ante is higher than the smallest chip denomination. They race them off as soon as possible.

On a similar note, the WPT did not want to color up to large denomination chips (25K) at the final table even though the players were asking for it because they wanted all of the chips for TV. Apparently it looks better on TV although it becomes a pain to stack all of those chips.
pudley4
11-02-2005, 10:10 AM
[ QUOTE ]
Apparently it looks better on TV although it becomes a pain to stack all of those chips.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. The fishies...er...viewers don't want to see Raymer bet $1,000,000 by throwing in a single chip - they want to see a huge mound of chips, spilling all over the place.

At the HPT event I was in, they actually colored down some of the players to put more chips on the table.
benfranklin
11-02-2005, 02:38 PM
[ QUOTE ]
10k / person * 5800 people = 58,000,000 in chips

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe that the biggest chips at the WSOP are $50K each. If everything was colored up to that level, that would still leave over 1000 chips on the table, or over 50 stacks of 20 chips, each stack being $1 million. That's a lot of chips in front of the final 2-3 people.
ZenMusician
11-02-2005, 10:58 PM
[ QUOTE ]
...it becomes a pain to stack all of those chips.

[/ QUOTE ]

Shame on you. /images/graemlins/mad.gif

-ZEN