Home Set-up

[Wildcard]

I just bought some of those chips on ebay (500). I want to set up my own home game, and was wondering what Denominations of chips I should Choose? I am only used to my family's sunday games with nickel,dime,quarter. But the people I know who want to play want more than that. I need to figure out the chips and the table limits/antes before I get too carried away. Any help here is appreciated.

[Hedge Henderson]

I think you're really asking two questions. The stated one is on chip denominations. There's also ain implied question about limits.

There are some crucial pieces of information missing, though. What color chips did you purchase, and how many of each? Which games do you want to play? What would be the average acceptable (say, a friendly game) loss for a night among the people you know want to play? The maximum acceptable loss? How long do you expect your games to last?

I'm new here, too. I've found nearly everyone here extremely helpful, but questions without enough information receive far fewer responses.

[Wildcard]

Sorry about that, I have not ordered anything yet. I can choose the chips I want from .10/.25/.50/1.00/2.50/5/25/100/500 chips, I guess it would be acceptable to lose $100 a night to start. I like holdem, 7 and 5 card variations like no peek, iron cross, etc. I am used to other people running the games when I played at my families house on sundays, but now its my turn. My friends dont want to play penny ante, but I dont care as long as Im playing. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[slamdunkpro]

If $100 is a target then start with 1/2 or 2/4 holdem. Get 300 $1's 150 $5's & 50 $25's. If you need 50 cent chips go to the bank and order $50 worth of half dollars (cheaper than chips)

[Wildcard]

First of all thankyou.. second nice beardie...third I am new this "world" of poker terms.. I know how to play, played a lot of home games like I said, do pretty well..but never played at the casino only blackjack..so now that I have decided to step it up a notch, I land here, and I dont understand 1/2 2/4 exactly, nor do I get blinds. so forgive my ignorance but I know when to say I don't know..and maybe just maybe tomarrow I will!! (If your willing to set me straight)

Thanks

[Hedge Henderson]

1/2, 2/4 refers to the betting limits. In the "casino" games, the latter would mean all bets and raises are $2 in the early betting rounds, and $4 on the later betting rounds. What's early and what's late depends on the game.

If you and your friends are pretty new to poker, it might be better to start out with what they'd call spread limit. If you're playing dealer's choice, you'll probably also want to use antes instead of blinds. Most home poker players are more familiar with antes, anyway.

If you want lots of action, keep the antes relatively high. Unless your friends are reckless or you plan to play all night, $0.50 ante and $2.50 maximum bet will make a $100 loss fairly rare and a $200 loss an extreme. If people like to bet and raise a lot, then you might consider $0.25 ante and perhaps a $1.25 or $1.50 maximum bet.

Slamdunkpro's counts are close to what I'd suggest for an ante game. Since everybody has to ante every hand, you'd want around half of your chips to be whatever your ante is, and most of the rest something near the maximum bet. Put the rest in a higher denomination or two. They'll make it easier to count down the stacks at the end of the night, and also allow a larger total chip amount to take care of rebuys or big nights when you have more players than you expected.

There is one thing you should consider, though. If your home game begin to evolve towards more "real" poker (casino style) as ours did after about a year, you may find yourself with far too many of the small chips and not enough intermediate ones.

[Wildcard]

Thanks, I was thinking more towards $1/$5 because if we wanted to do anything less I might as well use coins, they are cheaper, and yes I am used to only dealers choice, and for now I like it that way, so I will start out that way. One of the guys who will be playing suggested the same thing as SDP 1/5/25, its just that I wanted to see what others had run into in their home games so maybe I could adjust for it now instead of later, so pretty much what your saying is that blinds are only for casino style play and don't matter on ante style.

[PseudoPserious]

If I were you, I'd get chips that didn't have the denomination printed on them. That way your set won't become obsolete when you move up in limits.

My set has 500 chips with 5 colors (150/100/100/100/50). It handles the .05/.10 game with the wives, our normal $1/$2 game, and the "scary" no-limit $100 buy-in game we play on Halloween.

If I could change anything about the set, I'd probably break up the colors 200/100/100/50/50, but as it is it's worked out pretty well. We keep the relative values of the colors consistent, just changing how much the base chip is actually worth.

PP

[Slacker13]

You want to factor how many people would be playing and multiply that by the buy ins. So if you were doing 5-10, you had 8 people with a $300 buy in that would be 60 red chips (5$each) per buy in for a total of 480 red chips. Now you need chips for the blinds you want to figure 10 1$ chips for each player to start should be sufficient.

I play 5-10 and 10-20 mainly and just purchased chips myself so I can start hosting games.
I purchased:
750 reds (5$)
100 whites (1$)
100 Green ($25)
50 Black ($100)

My chips are geared a little more for a 10-20 game but we do occassionally play 25-50 so now I feel i need to buy another 300 of greens and blacks. Hope this helps. Slacker

[yocalif]

Hi,
I posted this before, this has been working for our social family games. I am about to launch a new Home Game for our Sacramento area, using a similiar format.

hope this helps you..

First we only play standard cardroom games:
T.H. 7stud, Omaha, Pineapple, draw, etc..
Our game is more social, that serious poker players.
Typical buy-ins are usually $10 or $20 minimum.
We play usually pot limit or no-limit.
So for a $10 min. night you will receive $1000 in chips.
The denominations are: $5, $25, $100, $500
Most players want to play holdem, so we stick with the blind structure. Each player gets to pick his favorite game, and the same game is dealt until the deal comes back to whoever turn it was to choose that game, then next player chooses the game.

Blinds are $5 and $10, $1000 in chips = 100 x BB same as in NL games online max buy-in. Rebuys are allow when your stack is below $300.

We would use the same exact structure if the max buy-in is $50 or $100 (we haven't played that big). If someone wants more play we have occassionally increased to $2000 in chips, but that is rare.

There are several benefits to using a tourney type setup, {denomination of chips greater than value of actual real money.}
1. If the buy-in is small, players enjoy saying I raise $100 instead of $1. Meaning its appears more fun than playing for dimes and quarters, yet it is the same.

2. Players seem to get in the spirit of things and gamble more.

3. I only have 300-4 color chipset, this setup will accomodate up to 10 players easily.

We usually play with 6 to 8 players.
Depending on time constraints we usually like to play until only 3 players are left. If things are moving slow or we are going to run out of time, we induce blind amount increases, and antes.

This has worked for us, and we also play limit on some nights, but the blinds are higher...

[Wildcard]

Why give $1000.00 in chips for $10, why not use the actual values, is it just because you want people to "feel" like they're high rollers?

Thanks,
WC

[Wildcard]

Wow!! You guys must play some killer games huh? That's a lot of chips, I only have 500 to split up and I figure less than 10 people or so... and $100 loss/risk for the night.

[yocalif]

Well the first reason, IT WORKS! Years ago we at our holiday family get togethers, we played for nickel, dime, quarters, and had no chips, then we went to all quarters. I bought chips about 4 years ago, and switch to this tournament setup where your buy-in bought "X"# of chips, and we switched play to No-limit or pot-limit. The younger players loved it. This is what they see on TV playing for thousands of $$$. Now our little home game had the feel of a big game. Everyone took the game very serious. The younger players who are now in the early 20s started inviting friends. New players keep showing up each time we run the game, and usually want to play in our next game.

2, I only have 300-4color chip set. This format will handle 10 players, although there is a lot of chip color changes among the players during the game.

3, this setup will work for any buy-in amount up to $1000, yet the game never changes. If we increased the buy-in amount and some players want more play for their buy-in, we will double the playchips to $2000 for your buy-in. We have rarely had to do this.

4, to get more money in the game, allow an optional add-on at the very beginning. (they can get a 2nd buy-in). They still can only rebuy when their stack drops below $300.

5, it limits losses. Our game is a social game, the max buy-in rebuys I have seen anyone lose is 3. I think the reason for this, it is embarrassing to have to reload multiple times.

6, we have introduced 1 table satellites, 1 player gets all the money. We again use the exact same setup, but add blind increases every 10 minutes.

My point is we have an exciting game, it doesn't matter if the buy-in is $5 or $50 they are taking it pretty serious. When we first started some tried to run over the game with frequent all-ins, because we might only have a small buy-in. They soon learned that at the end of the evening they usually were sitting on the couch watching TV while the 2 or 3 others where chopping the cash.

[Wildcard]

If you get $1000.00 dollars worth of chips for $10 then doesnt it make it harder to "cash out" at the end?

[yocalif]

[ QUOTE ]
If you get $1000.00 dollars worth of chips for $10 then doesnt it make it harder to "cash out" at the end?

[/ QUOTE ]

Cash out is very easy:

For $1000 Play chips:
$10 buy-in each $1play chip = .01 cents or $100 play chip = $1.00 real money
$1 play chip equals:
$20 buyin = .02cents
$30 buyin = .03cents
$40 buyin = .04cents

[RydenStoompala]

I purchased and then gave as gifts 11.5 gram chip sets that came with Kem cards. The best mix for a 500 chip set was 300 white, 100 red and 100 green for the $1, $5 and $25 denominations. Most people at home games do not want to go over the $200 limit, unless they are serious players, so you use a lot of whites in the $1-2 and $2-4 structures. The players love the buy-in and cash out rituals and having real chips makes the game "feel" more real. We found controlling the buy-ins was more important than how you denominate as you can easily handle shortages by letting players color change with each other.