If you are setting up a poker home game and want to know what each chip is worth and how many to give to each person, you have come to the right place. I have been a poker tournament player for over 10 years and can give you solidanswers.
What are the poker chip values for home games?
Doubledown Casino Free Chips & Coins Links. Any Doubledown casino free chips link we feature on our page is taken from an official source, this means you won't find any spam or scams on our website. We collect the links from all of the official Doubledown social media pages and put them in one simple to use place for your convenience. Your balance goes up and down, but these chips don't have any monetary value. They're just a means of keeping score. You can compare playing online casino games with free chips to playing poker for matchsticks or toothpicks as a kid. It's a way to keep score in the game without risking anything with any actual monetary value. How To Make Easy Kimchi at Home Baechu, or napa cabbage, kimchi is made by lacto-fermentation, the same process that creates sauerkraut and traditional dill pickles. In the first stage, the cabbage is soaked in a salty brine that kills off harmful bacteria. If you have a lot of smaller-denomination chips and wish to change for larger-denomination chips to make it easier to carry them to the cashier's booth, ask the dealer to 'color up.' He or she then will give you one green $25 chip for five red $5 chips, or a black $100 chip for twenty $5 chips, for example.
- White or Gray – $1
- Red – $5
- Blue – $10
- Green – $25
- Black – $100
- Purple – $500
- Yellow – $1,000
- Pink – $5,000
- Orange- $10,000
While these are the traditional values assigned for poker chips, what denominations you use can be tailored for whatever type of game you happen to be playing. The rest of this article will cover everything you need to know about optimizing your poker home game so that your friends will think you are a pro.
What Values for Common Chip Sets?
The traditional chip values for each color were established by casinos to represent real money. In other words, a blue chip at a casino can be traded in for a $10 bill.
Nowadays, this system doesn't make a whole lot of sense for home games unless you happen to be playing a high stakes cash game.
Most people either play cash games for small amounts of money, where the highest denomination is something like $5. Or, they play a tournament.
Setting Up Cash For Games
In cash games, your chips count as actual money and there is no prize pool. If you run out of chips you are out of the game unless you reload. This format is the easiest to organize and play, since you don't have to worry about a tournament clock or rising blind levels.
Cash Game Chip Values
If you are using your poker chips to play a home cash game, I recommend just following the traditional rules. White is $1, red is $5, blue is $10, green is $25. This will cover you for games up to $2/$5 blinds.
If you want to play higher stakes, say $5/$10 or $10/$20, you will need black and possibly purple chips. Or, you can just convert the white chips to $100 and red to $500 if your set does not contain black and purple.
How Many Poker Chips Do We Need for Cash Games?
A good rule of thumbs is to figure that you need at least 50 chips for every person in the game.
Mostbudget chipsets come with at least 300 chips with 5 different colors. That usually includes 100 white chips and 50 of the other colors. That is usually enough for up to 5 or 6 people to comfortably play without worrying about having enough chips.
If you have 6 or more players, you will definitely want to invest in a 500 piece set, like this inexpensive one (Click to see Amazon Listing).
If you want to customize the denominations of an individual poker chipset, you will likely need to get a higher-end brand, like my absolute favorite chipset.
How Many Poker Chips per Person? What Do They Start With?
In cash games, poker players may buy in for as much as they want. If you want to set a minimum or a maximum, that is fine. A 20 big blind(bb) minimum and a 100bb maximum are common.
Here are the chip distributions for common stack buy-in sizes:
$1.00/$2.00 Blinds
$2.00/$5.00 Blinds
$5.00/$10.00 Blinds
$10.00/$25.00 Blinds
What If We Want to Play Smaller Stakes?
If you want to play a small friendly game, feel free to play as low as you want. For example, you could make chips worth the following:
- White – $0.10
- Red – $0.25
- Blue – $1.00
Here is a good distribution for playing .10/.25 blinds. For a friendly game, I recommend playing with 40 big blind stacks of $10 each:
$0.10/$0.25 Blinds
By choosing to play 40bb each, no one would be likely to lose more than $50 in a typical night. I included the 100bb distribution if you prefer deeper stacked play.
Tournament Setup & Starting Stack Distributions
Tournaments are actually a fairly recent invention that has grown immensely in popularity since Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003. Now, it's the most common poker format played in home games.
The great thing about tournaments is that it's easy to limit the amount you can lose in a session. If it's a $10 buy-in that's all you can lose for the events. Just throw your money in a hat and play.
Tournaments do, however, take a bit more organization and maintaience from the host. You have to:
- Setup and decide on the prizes
- Manage the rising blind levels
- 'Color up' the chips as the blinds go up
Poker Tournament Chip Values
If you decide to play a poker tournament and want to be able to play more than 5 or 6 blind levels, then you will need at least 4 chip colors. Most chip sets now come with at least red, white, green, and black.
Here is a simple and flexible chip value system commonly used in live poker tournaments:
- Red – $25
- White – $100
- Green – $500
- Black – $1,000
- Pink – $5,000
This distribution will work perfectly in most events with less than 30 people.
If you get to the point where $5,000 or $10,000 chips are needed, you can just bring $25 chips back into play and change them to whatever is needed. Or, if you have a 5th color, usually either black or pink, you can designate them as $5,000 or $10,000 chips.
It's also okay to get creative and find an item laying around the house that can act as a substitute for the higher chips.
How Many Poker Chips Are Needed for Tournaments?
Tournaments tend to require fewer chips per person since the chips are usually worth more each. Even so, a common 300 piece set will still only accommodate up to 6 players. It is definitely worth your while to have at least a 500 piece set for every 9 people that will be playing.
I did some research and found a really good inexpensive 500-piece set (Click for Amazon price). I would suggest getting one of these for every 9-person table you are hosting.
What If My Chip Set Only Comes with Three Colors?
Some of the cheaper chips sets come with three colors. Usually, you get white, red, and blue.
Chances Courtenay offers a social gaming experience and live weekend entertainment. Share good times with friends at MATCH Eatery & Public House or take a seat on the exciting slot floor. Chances casino courtenay. For some entertainment, the Chances Casino of Courtenay is the ideal place. On 17,000 square feet, it features 200 slots, virtual Blackjack, traditional paper and electronic bingo. The RED21 Gaming Tap & Grill is available 24/7 as well as the Coaster Express, the casino's snack bar, if you need to have a break between two stakes. CHANCES PLAYTIME 361 Hunt Road Courtenay, BC V9N 9B8 Canada 250.334.4531 Manager: Steve Shorrock. To reserve a table or to place a takeout order at MATCH Eatery & Public House, please call (250) 338-1307.
For tournaments, if you only three chip colors you will want to assign them as follows:
- Red – $25
- White – $100
- Blue- $500
If you have different colors, use the same values but just assign them to whatever color you want.
How Many Poker Chips per Person?
For most home game tournaments, a solid option is to have each player start with 3,000 chips using the following distribution:
- 8 Red $25 Chips
- 8 White $100 Chips
- 2 Green $500 Chips
- 1 Black $1,000 Chips
This will have each player starting with 60 big blinds. I find this amount to be a good balance between having enough room to play without having the event take too long.
What If We Want to Play Deeper Stacked?
If you want to play a deeper stacked tournament and have enough chips to go around, I recommend starting with $10,000 chips each with the following distribution:
- 8 Red $25 Chips
- 8 White $100 Chips
- 8 Green $500 Chips
- 5 Black $1,000 Chips
What blind levels should we play?
Based on the recommended chip distributions, here is a solid blind level schedule:
Helpful hint: If you want a deeper stacked feel to the tournament but don't have many chips, just play a standard 3,000 stack with longer blind levels. Instead of the usual 15 or 20-minute blind levels, you might play 30 or 45-minute levels.
How Long Should Blind Levels Be?
For most home games, I advocate never having blind levels higher than 20 minutes. 15 minutes is a really popular choice. Even 1 table events will still last a couple of hours using this speed.
If you want a fast event, go with 10-minute levels. In live play, 5 minutes is difficult to maintain and it will only allow 2-3 hands per blind level.
When Should I Color up the Chips?
Here is a good schedule for removing smaller chips and introducing a larger denomination:
What Is a Good Tournament Prize Schedule?
For friendly home poker tournament games, I recommend a fairly wide distribution of prizes. Therefore, I suggest paying out at least 1/3 of the field. Here is an example payout structure:
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, I have given you all the information you need to get set up for your poker home game. If I missed anything please be sure to let me know in the comments and I will get it added.
Also, if you need more help planning your poker event, be sure to check out my article on hosting the perfect poker night. And don't forget to use high-quality playing cards, they'll take your game to the next level. Thanks for stopping by!
Related Products
If you want to really add class to your home poker games, here are a few products that I recommend:
- Copag Playing Cards– My favorite premium brand of playing cards. Trust me on this, don't use those cheap Bicycle cards anymore.
- Octagon Folding Table– For smaller games with 5 players or less.
- Oval Poker Table– For games with 6 or more players.
- Heavy Duty Folding Chairs– These will fit any size player up to 600 pounds. I come from a rather 'large' family if you catch my drift. Make sure you have good solid chairs to prop them up.
Related Questions
What is a short stack in poker? A short stack if poker is usually any chip stack that is 40 big blinds or lower. 50 to 100 big blinds is a mid stack, while greater than 100 big blinds is usually called a deep stack.
What poker table shape is best for home games? The best poker table shape for a home game varies based on how many players you are hosting. You will also need to factor in the size of the space you are fitting the table into. A safe bet is to buy an oval-shaped table. They usually seat at least 6 players comfortably and come in a variety of sizes.
How many buy-ins should I take to a poker game? When going to a casino or home game to play poker, it is usually a good idea to take at least 3 buy-ins for the stake you intend to play. However, it is a personal decision as to how many buy-ins you can stand to lose in one session. Limiting the amount of money you can lose in a poker session is known as setting a 'stop-loss.' Discovery bay poker run 2020 full.
'The guy who invented gambling was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius.'
That pithy sentence is usually attributed to Julius 'Big Jules' Weintraub, a big gambler who essentially invented the 'Vegas junket' for East Coast residents, though I have not been able to identify a reliable primary source for this quotation. Whoever said it was right — you can play poker with cash, but chips make the game far easier to manage.
Because chips are such a ubiquitous feature of poker, it's easy to accept their presence without much thought. But I think there's a lot that's worth knowing about poker chips before you sit down at a table full of them.
Chips and money (a complicated relationship)
If you have 6 or more players, you will definitely want to invest in a 500 piece set, like this inexpensive one (Click to see Amazon Listing).
If you want to customize the denominations of an individual poker chipset, you will likely need to get a higher-end brand, like my absolute favorite chipset.
How Many Poker Chips per Person? What Do They Start With?
In cash games, poker players may buy in for as much as they want. If you want to set a minimum or a maximum, that is fine. A 20 big blind(bb) minimum and a 100bb maximum are common.
Here are the chip distributions for common stack buy-in sizes:
$1.00/$2.00 Blinds
$2.00/$5.00 Blinds
$5.00/$10.00 Blinds
$10.00/$25.00 Blinds
What If We Want to Play Smaller Stakes?
If you want to play a small friendly game, feel free to play as low as you want. For example, you could make chips worth the following:
- White – $0.10
- Red – $0.25
- Blue – $1.00
Here is a good distribution for playing .10/.25 blinds. For a friendly game, I recommend playing with 40 big blind stacks of $10 each:
$0.10/$0.25 Blinds
By choosing to play 40bb each, no one would be likely to lose more than $50 in a typical night. I included the 100bb distribution if you prefer deeper stacked play.
Tournament Setup & Starting Stack Distributions
Tournaments are actually a fairly recent invention that has grown immensely in popularity since Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003. Now, it's the most common poker format played in home games.
The great thing about tournaments is that it's easy to limit the amount you can lose in a session. If it's a $10 buy-in that's all you can lose for the events. Just throw your money in a hat and play.
Tournaments do, however, take a bit more organization and maintaience from the host. You have to:
- Setup and decide on the prizes
- Manage the rising blind levels
- 'Color up' the chips as the blinds go up
Poker Tournament Chip Values
If you decide to play a poker tournament and want to be able to play more than 5 or 6 blind levels, then you will need at least 4 chip colors. Most chip sets now come with at least red, white, green, and black.
Here is a simple and flexible chip value system commonly used in live poker tournaments:
- Red – $25
- White – $100
- Green – $500
- Black – $1,000
- Pink – $5,000
This distribution will work perfectly in most events with less than 30 people.
If you get to the point where $5,000 or $10,000 chips are needed, you can just bring $25 chips back into play and change them to whatever is needed. Or, if you have a 5th color, usually either black or pink, you can designate them as $5,000 or $10,000 chips.
It's also okay to get creative and find an item laying around the house that can act as a substitute for the higher chips.
How Many Poker Chips Are Needed for Tournaments?
Tournaments tend to require fewer chips per person since the chips are usually worth more each. Even so, a common 300 piece set will still only accommodate up to 6 players. It is definitely worth your while to have at least a 500 piece set for every 9 people that will be playing.
I did some research and found a really good inexpensive 500-piece set (Click for Amazon price). I would suggest getting one of these for every 9-person table you are hosting.
What If My Chip Set Only Comes with Three Colors?
Some of the cheaper chips sets come with three colors. Usually, you get white, red, and blue.
Chances Courtenay offers a social gaming experience and live weekend entertainment. Share good times with friends at MATCH Eatery & Public House or take a seat on the exciting slot floor. Chances casino courtenay. For some entertainment, the Chances Casino of Courtenay is the ideal place. On 17,000 square feet, it features 200 slots, virtual Blackjack, traditional paper and electronic bingo. The RED21 Gaming Tap & Grill is available 24/7 as well as the Coaster Express, the casino's snack bar, if you need to have a break between two stakes. CHANCES PLAYTIME 361 Hunt Road Courtenay, BC V9N 9B8 Canada 250.334.4531 Manager: Steve Shorrock. To reserve a table or to place a takeout order at MATCH Eatery & Public House, please call (250) 338-1307.
For tournaments, if you only three chip colors you will want to assign them as follows:
- Red – $25
- White – $100
- Blue- $500
If you have different colors, use the same values but just assign them to whatever color you want.
How Many Poker Chips per Person?
For most home game tournaments, a solid option is to have each player start with 3,000 chips using the following distribution:
- 8 Red $25 Chips
- 8 White $100 Chips
- 2 Green $500 Chips
- 1 Black $1,000 Chips
This will have each player starting with 60 big blinds. I find this amount to be a good balance between having enough room to play without having the event take too long.
What If We Want to Play Deeper Stacked?
If you want to play a deeper stacked tournament and have enough chips to go around, I recommend starting with $10,000 chips each with the following distribution:
- 8 Red $25 Chips
- 8 White $100 Chips
- 8 Green $500 Chips
- 5 Black $1,000 Chips
What blind levels should we play?
Based on the recommended chip distributions, here is a solid blind level schedule:
Helpful hint: If you want a deeper stacked feel to the tournament but don't have many chips, just play a standard 3,000 stack with longer blind levels. Instead of the usual 15 or 20-minute blind levels, you might play 30 or 45-minute levels.
How Long Should Blind Levels Be?
For most home games, I advocate never having blind levels higher than 20 minutes. 15 minutes is a really popular choice. Even 1 table events will still last a couple of hours using this speed.
If you want a fast event, go with 10-minute levels. In live play, 5 minutes is difficult to maintain and it will only allow 2-3 hands per blind level.
When Should I Color up the Chips?
Here is a good schedule for removing smaller chips and introducing a larger denomination:
What Is a Good Tournament Prize Schedule?
For friendly home poker tournament games, I recommend a fairly wide distribution of prizes. Therefore, I suggest paying out at least 1/3 of the field. Here is an example payout structure:
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, I have given you all the information you need to get set up for your poker home game. If I missed anything please be sure to let me know in the comments and I will get it added.
Also, if you need more help planning your poker event, be sure to check out my article on hosting the perfect poker night. And don't forget to use high-quality playing cards, they'll take your game to the next level. Thanks for stopping by!
Related Products
If you want to really add class to your home poker games, here are a few products that I recommend:
- Copag Playing Cards– My favorite premium brand of playing cards. Trust me on this, don't use those cheap Bicycle cards anymore.
- Octagon Folding Table– For smaller games with 5 players or less.
- Oval Poker Table– For games with 6 or more players.
- Heavy Duty Folding Chairs– These will fit any size player up to 600 pounds. I come from a rather 'large' family if you catch my drift. Make sure you have good solid chairs to prop them up.
Related Questions
What is a short stack in poker? A short stack if poker is usually any chip stack that is 40 big blinds or lower. 50 to 100 big blinds is a mid stack, while greater than 100 big blinds is usually called a deep stack.
What poker table shape is best for home games? The best poker table shape for a home game varies based on how many players you are hosting. You will also need to factor in the size of the space you are fitting the table into. A safe bet is to buy an oval-shaped table. They usually seat at least 6 players comfortably and come in a variety of sizes.
How many buy-ins should I take to a poker game? When going to a casino or home game to play poker, it is usually a good idea to take at least 3 buy-ins for the stake you intend to play. However, it is a personal decision as to how many buy-ins you can stand to lose in one session. Limiting the amount of money you can lose in a poker session is known as setting a 'stop-loss.' Discovery bay poker run 2020 full.
'The guy who invented gambling was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius.'
That pithy sentence is usually attributed to Julius 'Big Jules' Weintraub, a big gambler who essentially invented the 'Vegas junket' for East Coast residents, though I have not been able to identify a reliable primary source for this quotation. Whoever said it was right — you can play poker with cash, but chips make the game far easier to manage.
Because chips are such a ubiquitous feature of poker, it's easy to accept their presence without much thought. But I think there's a lot that's worth knowing about poker chips before you sit down at a table full of them.
Chips and money (a complicated relationship)
The first thing to understand is that chips are real money, just in a different form. This truth is simultaneously obvious and elusive. Weintraub's observation gets at how easy it is to forget it, and treat chips as mere abstractions.
In The Biggest Game in Town — one of the most articulate and influential books ever written about poker — Al Alvarez mused, 'The chip is like a conjurer's sleight of hand that turns an egg into a billiard ball, a necessity of life into a plaything, reality into illusion. Players who freeze up at the sight of a fifty-dollar bill, thinking it could buy them a week's food at the supermarket, will toss two green [$25] chips into the pot without even hesitating if the odds are right.'
Successful poker players rely on their weaker opponents losing touch with the equivalence of poker-world chips and real-world money. As for their own relationship with that truth, however, strong players both remember and disregard it. That is, you must keep in mind that playing badly and as a result losing $100 in chips is the same as setting a $100 bill on fire. But at the same time, you can't let the fear of losing your hard-earned money prevent you from investing your chips in the way that will be the most profitable.
But enough abstraction. Let's deal with the tangible aspects of poker chips, as they are used in casinos. All of the following points apply equally to both tournaments and cash games, with two exceptions, which I will note when we get to them.
Color code
The dominant color of most poker chips is related to their denominations in a nearly universal way: $5 chips are red, $25 green, and $100 black. (If you're playing with chips above this, you're not likely to be new enough to poker to be reading this article!) The exception is the $1 chip, which casinos order in a wide variety of color schemes, with either white or blue being the most common. Meanwhile tournament chips also do not usually follow this or any other consistent color pattern.
How To Make Casino Chips At Home Delivery
Stacking chips
It is both courteous and strategically advantageous to keep your chips in neat stacks of 5, 10, or 20 chips each. This makes it easy for both you and other players to count or at least closely estimate how much you have on the table — a vital consideration in no-limit and pot-limit games.
You need to know at all times which opponents can 'stack' you (i.e., take all of your chips if you lose a big confrontation), or, conversely, how much you could potentially win from them. Players whose chips are in an unorganized heap, or in uneven stacks, or in which denominations are mixed together haphazardly, make this unnecessarily difficult.
How To Make Casino Chips At Home Order
Hiding chips
For similar reasons, it is both against the rules and deeply unethical to hide one's largest-denomination chips from the view of other players. If you play poker long enough, sooner or later you will encounter a dishonest player who carefully hides several black chips under or behind stacks of red chips. His goal is to get you to underestimate how much money he has in play. If, for example, you have $500 but see only $200 in front of the guy in seat four, you might be more inclined to call his all-in bet than you would be if you could see the six $100 chips he has stashed behind his stacks of red.
If you see somebody trying to hide his big chips this way, you not only may, but should point it out to the dealer. If you'd prefer not to risk being seen as a 'snitch,' you can step away from the table and tell a floor person about the problem. Poker rooms have little tolerance for such 'angle shooting,' because it upsets less-experienced players when they get deceived this way, and the casino does not want to lose them as customers.
How To Make Homemade Poker Chips
Removing chips
Once you put chips into play at the table, you cannot remove any of them until you remove all of them to cash out. That is, you can't pocket some of your winnings to ensure that you won't lose them, no matter how tempting it seems to do so. (I'll explain this in more detail in a future article when I address the whole subject of 'table stakes.')
Similarly, you cannot just give some of your chips to another player at the table, such as your spouse or best friend. If he or she needs more chips, they must be purchased from the casino. (You can give cash out of your pocket to another player, however.)
When cash plays
Most casinos allow at least some forms of cash to be used in poker games. The most common rule is that $100 bills, but no other currency, can be in play. However, a few casinos allow other denominations of cash to be used in poker games, while a few don't allow any cash on the table at all. The only way to know the house rule on this point is to ask. When cash is in play, these bills are subject to the same rules about being kept easily visible to other players and not being removed from the table until you are leaving.
I think it will be obvious to you that cash never substitutes for or supplements chips in poker tournaments. In fact, poker tournament chips are usually explicitly marked 'NO CASH VALUE' so that nobody mistakes them for ones exchangeable for cash.
Personally, I prefer using just chips, so if I win a pot that has bills in it, I will ask the dealer or chip runner to trade me chips for them. My reason for this idiosyncrasy — and I admit that that's all it is — is simply that when I look at chip stacks, either my own or other players', my brain tends not to register the bills the same way it does the chips. As a result, I've occasionally made large errors in estimating what amounts are in play. Apparently, other people don't have this problem. Do as seems best to you.
A possibly profitable tip: Many players, when in possession of a mixture of both chips and bills, will be much more reluctant to put the cash into the pot than the chips. This is precisely because of the psychological effect mentioned at the beginning of the article, in which chips lose their equivalence to 'real' money. For that reason, a player who is betting with his cash instead of or in addition to his chips is less likely to be bluffing than one who is betting with chips only, all else being equal.
Of course, like everything about poker 'tells,' this is not a universal phenomenon. But it's sufficiently common to make it worth paying attention to see if it's true about the specific players at your table, then using that knowledge to your advantage.
There a lot more to say — and to learn — about chips. In Part 2, I'll explain the rules about making bets and raises with chips.
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the 'Poker Grump' blog.
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