Choosing Chip Amounts/Colors

[ThePopinjay]

My friend is buying a 500 chip set off of ebay. Anyway, the seller lets you choose which the colors and the amounts of chips to get. White, Red, Blue, Green, Black, Purple, Grey, Pink, Orange, and Yellow are the colors. We'll probably be playing 4 or 5 people with these chips in NLHE home tourneys. Anyone got any advice?, I'm not a big home game person.

[TripKings]

Can I assume that they will not have any money amounts stamped on them? If and when you play cash games, what amounts are we talking about? What $ amount of chips do you plan on atarting a NL tourney with?(T=?)

-TripKings

[ThePopinjay]

No marking just colors. So we'll designate a set amount for each color. Maybe each person starts with 1000 chips? I think that's standard for small little tourneys.

[jdl22]

Finally I get to respond to your post here instead of on irc!

Anyway, I bought the same chips on Ebay (at least it sounds the same) they're the "clay" type that are really some sort of plastic mold with a metal slug. They are great imo and good value.

Getting to the question. I highly reccomend getting at most 4 colors. I got 200 each of red and blue, and 50 each of green and yellow (Go Ducks!). Even so I have had some issues being forced to make change in the few games where I've used my chips. You will be using the lower denominations a lot more than the higher ones. I think my setup is a good balance. Even going with 4 colors with a distribution 250/175/50/25 would work if they let you buy them in blocks of 25.

[LetsRock]

A home game I play in uses primarily 3 colors - red, green, black.

We play NL with a varying $ buy-in and regardless of the stakes for the night, we get $1000 in chips and blinds are 5/10. If you're going to play primarily NL I'd reccommend about 60% red ($5), 30% green ($25) and 10% black ($100). If you're going to have more than 5 players, I'd reccommend you get another 500 chips.

If you're going to play some limit, I'd reccommend you get 1,000 chips of one color (you can change the value of the chip to meet your stakes for the night).

[Wayne]

Personally, I like to maximize the number of chips in play. You don't want 6 colors, 4 of which you almost never use. You also want players to have enough chips so someone doesn't have to make change every other hand. Also make the denominations multiples. Don't make a $10 chip and and $25 chip.

$5 - 200 chips
$25 - 250 chips
$100 - 50 chips

For 5 players:
40 $5 chips each = $200
32 $25 chips each = $800

For 8 players:
25 $5 chips each = $125
31 $25 chips each = $775
1 $100 chip = $100

[d_l0rd]

This is interesting, I'm now thinking of ordering a chip case with 1000 chips witout numbers.

So do you recommend:
600 red 5$
300 green 25$
100 black 100$

?

is 5$ really necessary for a nl tourney? wouldn 25 and 100 be enough? first limit blinds could be 25/50,50/100, 75/150

then you can remove the 25$ chips and only play with hundreds...

am I wrong?

[d_l0rd]

http://www.homepokertourney.com/chips_needed.htm

These amounts look pretty neat to me.

[LetsRock]

That's all pretty and all, but the truth is, the fewer colors you have, the smoother your tourney will run. The players/dealer will spoend a lot of time dealing with making change if you have a lot of colors.

Depending on how quickly you want your tourney to run, determines how high you want to sart the blinds. If you're starting with 1,000T, your tourney will go very quickly if you're starting at a 25/50 blind level. The most successful tourneys I've been involved with are 3 color, with the low color coming off the table after 2 or 3 rounds.

[Wayne]

[ QUOTE ]
This is interesting, I'm now thinking of ordering a chip case with 1000 chips witout numbers.

So do you recommend:
600 red 5$
300 green 25$
100 black 100$


[/ QUOTE ]

If all the chips were in play, with 8 players:
75 Red
37 Green
12 Black
That's a lot of reds. The Green and Black counts are good enough.

You don't NEED 1000 chips for 8 players. But if you want to buy 1000 anyway, consider shifting some of those reds into the other colors. You don't need more than 40 chips per person for any one color when your chip denominations are only 5x apart.