Need help buying chips - how many?
 

Seems to be a lot of people around here with a lot of good advice/experience. I was wondering...

how many chips (denominations, etc) do I need to have an 8-10 person NLHE tourney. Right now I have like 350 Red, 350 white, and 50 black chips(which come out later) of the composite chips (i know, please keep the comments to a minimum [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). We usually have about 6 people but I would like to have room to grow.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

HomePokerTourney.com - Everything you need to know is here.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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HomePokerTourney.com - Everything you need to know is here.

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duh [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] - thanks! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

You have more than enough chips at 750. You might want to add another color or two though. 350 is a LOT of one color, much less two.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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You have more than enough chips at 750. You might want to add another color or two though. 350 is a LOT of one color, much less two.

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I'm thinking 200,200,50 and 50 - based on hpt.com

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

Sounds good.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

Since the lowest denomination chip is usually for the small blind, I recommend not buy quite as many of the lowest denomination chip for tournament poker. It seems the 2nd lowest (usually equal to 1 bet or big blind) is used more frequently than the other chips.

For instance:
100
200
100
50
50

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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Since the lowest denomination chip is usually for the small blind, I recommend not buy quite as many of the lowest denomination chip for tournament poker. It seems the 2nd lowest (usually equal to 1 bet or big blind) is used more frequently than the other chips.

For instance:
100
200
100
50
50

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interesting....I like that idea....what chip values do you use?

this is why I posted the question...looking for the "best" answer.

I guess I should figure out (better) what format we want. Somtimes we start the first round with just a BB. Strange but it makes things run easier (chips).

I was thinking (for chips) $5,$25,$100, and $500

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

The easiest way to do this is to think about the total value you want each player to start with and then think of a chip distribution for one player that makes sense to you. Then you can simply multiply that out by the number of players and see if you have the right number of chips.

For instance I like to start with 1800 to 2000 in chips. I don't think you need the total breakdown, but just for example, in the game I've been playing in, we start with T150 in ten dollar chips. So that's fifteen 10 dollar chips a person or 150 chips needed for a ten person tourney. If you do it that way its pretty easy to figure out.

Also 10 people with 2000 in chips puts 20,000 dollars worth of chips in play in the tourney, so you can obviously figure you need very few 500 dollar chips, if any, and probably don't need any thousands.

With only three colors of chips its a little tricky, though. If you start off with 10/20 dollar blinds, I'd go with 10 dollar, 50 dollar and 100 dollar chips. If you like a 2000 starting stack you could go:
5 - 100's
24 - 50's
30 - 10's.

On a ten man tourney that puts 50 blacks, 240 50's, and 300 10's. If you don't want to have all your blacks in play (in case any get lost or whatever) knock off a hundred chip and add 2 fifty's. It'll be a bit awkward for a bit, and somebody is going to end up with massive stacks of tens so you'll want to take the tens off as soon as the blinds allow and probably redenominate the tens as either fifies or hundreds. I'd really be thinking about buying some more chips to get a fourth or fifth color in there. Simplifies things and makes stacks much more manageable if you can start folks off with a five hundred chip and I like having a 20 or 25 dollar chip in there too.

But of course you may like a different starting stack structure than I do, but the idea of figuring out how much in total value in chips you want to start with and back engineering it from there makes it pretty easy to figure out.

--Zetack

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

Thanks ZeTack....I completely agree with the reverse engineering. I like the idea of T2000 or T1500. Values can be assigned arbitrarily (but please tell me I'm not the only person that this drives nuts - not matching chip values to the casino cash values). I might just go with H.P.T.'s blind schedule. For T1500 it looks like you need 5,25, and 100 (maybe 500) so I think I could get away with 3 colors.

I am confused/amused by your T150 w/ 15 $10 chips! Speed tourney? No SB?

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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Thanks ZeTack....I completely agree with the reverse engineering. I like the idea of T2000 or T1500. Values can be assigned arbitrarily (but please tell me I'm not the only person that this drives nuts - not matching chip values to the casino cash values). I might just go with H.P.T.'s blind schedule. For T1500 it looks like you need 5,25, and 100 (maybe 500) so I think I could get away with 3 colors.

I am confused/amused by your T150 w/ 15 $10 chips! Speed tourney? No SB?

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Sorry that wasn't clear, that was just an example that our smallest chip was 10 bucks and by our reverse engineering everybody got t150 dollars worth of tens, or 15 chips each. I believe the total starting chip stack in that one was t1950: 2 - 500's 4 - hundreds, 4 - fifties, 8 - 25's, and 15 tens. (Not my idea btw, I would've done it a bit differently, but it worked just fine).

I haven't played in a Casino, but I agree that unorthodox chip colors suck, it took me about halfway through my second tourney to get comfortable with the colors at this home tourney, and the new guys spend the entire tourney peering at the chart on the wall going "how much are the blues again" or at the bet on the table going, "how much is that?". Course that's what happens when the host decides to make greens be hundreds and blacks be five hundreds and the fifties are blue with white piping and the tens are white with blue piping...hey, if only I ran the zoo, ya know?

--Zetack

Edit: personally I don't think you need to have chips smaller than the small blind of the first level. H.P.T has ans increase of blinds from 10/20 to 15/30. I'd just make the second level 20/40 and if you go deep into the tournament before you start doubling blinds you can still get a lot of play: for instance 10/20, 20/40, 30/60, 40/80, 50/100 gives you plenty of play and if doesn't give you enough I go for longer levels rather than smaller increases. But that's just a matter of personal preference, I guess, plus it means less coloring up later.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

okay...you had me interested in the 15BB starting stack tourney. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] Things make sense, now. Sorry about the confusion.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

I concur. Longer levels will help in that you don't have to always worry about having those low value chips in play

Heck, you could go with 1st round at 10/10 and forget the nickel chip all together. Then second round would be 10/20.

Besides that, you can spend your time playing poker instead of always wondering about the clock.

For a tourney set, I still like the idea of limiting the low denomination chip. I've found that the 2nd & 3rd level chips get most of the action and you'll need the greatest amount of these chips in your set.

50
150
100
50
50

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

I know I said the 200 / 200 / 50 / 50 distribution looked good, but I think TN Poker Man makes a good point about much of the demand falling on the second-lowest value chip.

I've found the same thing in the past, and so a 500 set I've just ordered goes 75 / 150 / 125 / 100 / 25 / 25.

(And no, no set really needs six colours, it's just that they are nice chips and I wanted to get some purple and orange in there at the high end for aesthetic purposes.)

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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I concur. Longer levels will help in that you don't have to always worry about having those low value chips in play

Heck, you could go with 1st round at 10/10 and forget the nickel chip all together. Then second round would be 10/20.

Besides that, you can spend your time playing poker instead of always wondering about the clock.

For a tourney set, I still like the idea of limiting the low denomination chip. I've found that the 2nd & 3rd level chips get most of the action and you'll need the greatest amount of these chips in your set.

50
150
100
50
50

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I use a laptop (old POS) for the poker clock. Free software at H.P.T..com.

We use to not have a SB in the first round (we have a bunch of gamblers so folding around is never a problem). We are going to try this tonight(from HPT.com)

20 - $5
36 - $25
5 - $100

makes for T1500 if my math is right. I have enough chips right now for this (even though I'm dying to upgrade).

I like the idea of having 4 different colors. I think that would be nice.

Thanks again to everyone for all the help....still working this out in my head and will use all the info that you guys throw at me.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

If they do not have denominations on them, i'd not use more than 3 at a time (or 4 very sparingly). 4 chip colors can work, but 5 and/or 6 is way too many to have in play at one time for a tournament (unless they have denominations on them.

5, 25, 100 is a good mix (4th color at 500 wouldn't be terrible but anything more than that probably isn't necessary)

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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new guys spend the entire tourney peering at the chart on the wall going "how much are the blues again" or at the bet on the table going, "how much is that?"

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My first idea was to just have blue (better would be silver) for quarters, and green for dollars, and that's it, no more denominaitons. I thought this would be the most trivial mnenomic possible. However, it might be that you can't make a very good structure with this, or that it would get too unwieldly after about 5 levels. I guess you could add a gold chip on the high-end to alleviate that problem, but then you lose some of the power of the mnenomic.

Re: Need help buying chips - how many?
 

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If they do not have denominations on them, i'd not use more than 3 at a time (or 4 very sparingly). 4 chip colors can work, but 5 and/or 6 is way too many to have in play at one time for a tournament (unless they have denominations on them.

5, 25, 100 is a good mix (4th color at 500 wouldn't be terrible but anything more than that probably isn't necessary)

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no denomitations, FYI.

yeah, I think when I order the new ones it will be 4 colors. We played last night with 3 colors and things colored up nicely. They didn't like the $5 then $25 because it was such a large jump but I'm not going to do $10,$20,$50, $100...guess they will have to learn to like it. Maybe I could work out $25,$50,$100,$500.....ugh!

The speed of the limits needs to be worked out (or more starting chips) but all in all this was one of our better tourneys. (I also expanded the table so we had more room - very nice)