how many chip colors/values needed?

[newbie514]

i was just wondering what the need for having more than four or five chip colors/values was. im new to poker but looking at homepokertourney.com's recommended starting amount, blind structure, etc., there really isn't a need for more. am i missing something?

[faytlnd]

In my opinion, haveing more than 5 colors is overkill. Unless you really have a lot of extra money to spend, there is absolutely no reason to get over 5. And really, the cahnces that you would actually use that many colors is slim. Say you are playing a game with a 5 color set, and set the denoms at 5,10,25,100,500 (or 1,5,25,100,500). That means your next chip color is probably going to be worth 1000. Unless you are playing a huge tourney where the blinds are going to get very high, there is no need for that size of a chip. And besides, if you do end up needing it, a lot of people will just retire the 1 or 5 chip color and make it the new 1000. This can be done multiple times. Sure it would be nice to have a huge set with all the colors you could ever need, but thats just not monetarily feasible most of the time.

Personally, I would rather have a 1000 chip set with 5 colors and more of each color than waste some of them on a 6th. This way you couldplay a larger game with your set because you will have more of the starting denominations. If you have 6 colors, you can run into the problem of having to use 2 different colors for the same denomination....now THAT in my opinion is really tacky. Much rather worrying aboutretiring lower denoms.

[CaptLego]

I can't imagine any single home game needing more than 4 or 5 colors. However, if you want to play a variety of cash games (different stakes) and use the chips at face value, you'll need a corresponding range of chips.

[hachkc]

Tournaments (T1000)
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Its also a factor of how many folks you have playing and what rules (rebuys/addons). For 10 or less, you can get by with 3 colors (5,25,100) no problem. For 11-20, you'll probably want 4 colors (5, 25, 100, 500). If you do rebuys/addons, you'll need more chips and probably want some higher values also. The top 1 (4 colors) or top 2 (5 colors) chips are mostly going to be used for coloring up or rebuys. You might also want to use 1 in the starting stacks as the "big" chip. I sometimes like to put a "big", or trophy, chip in play because its kind a big thing when someone either bets it or has to change it. An example would be a T1250 start with 15x5, 15x25, 3x100 and 1x500

The most colors anyone should need is 5 (though 4 should be plenty for most home games) unless they have really large tournaments (50+ folks) or have really generous starting stacks for long tournaments, 10000 chips starting with 10/20 blinds.

Cash Games
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Shouldn't need more than 2 or 3 colors unless you are doing NL or pot limit games with a loose crowd and/or large buyins.

[Yarney]

I am wanting more and more to have pink chips valued at 2.5 dollars.

-Yarney

[TN_POKER_MAN]

we value our pink chips at $.69

[dandy_don]

It depends on whether you are playing ring games or tourneys or both.

You need the standard Red ($5), Green ($25), Black ($100), Blue ($500) and recently I have added Yellow ($1000) needed for the bigger tournies when you start "coloring up" the lower denominations late in the tourney.

If you are going to play ring games, you'll need to add Whites ($1) as a minimum, pehaps the Pink ($2.50) or some other colors if playing lower stakes, if you do not want to use one of the other colors listed above.

I bought a set of 1000 chips from a seller on Ebay that were the standard 11.5g "Deluxe Diamond" that I have really enjoyed for $77.00 plus shipping. No they are not "casino quality", but neither are the players that come to my games [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]. I had the seller break it down as 400 Reds, 350 Green, 150 Black and 100 Blue. I added 100 Yellow chips from the same seller.

This has worked well up to 20 player tournies (and this was before I added the Yellows).