Hi everyone. I have a set of poker chips that i take to college every day to play with which consists of the following:

25 x green chips
25 x red chips
25 x white chips
25 x blue chips

Basically we try and play a small tournament each lunch time (about 5 of us altogether usually), and i would like to know how to best distribute these severely limited number of chips between five people.

At the moment it's basically just people changing chips because they run out of greens or reds. I know that there isn't alot that can be done, and i can see why each player can only have a maximum of 5 chips of a certain colour given there is 5 players, but what chip values would you recommend.

At the moment we use this:

5 x 5 (green)
5 x 10 (red)
5 x 25 (white)
3 x 100 (blue)

and use this blind schedule:

5/10
10/20
25/50

After 25/50 it becomes basically a crapshoot and was wondering if a change could be recommended.

Thank you, and i know it's difficult!

5 x 1 (white)
4 x 5 (red)
3 x 25 (green)
2 x 100 (blue)

total: 300

and use this blind schedule:

1/2
2/4
3/6
4/8
Break: Get rid of whites
5/10
10/20
15/30
etc/

This should give some more poker play.

One- we're not chipping in for some additional, cheap chips... because why?

Second- if you're trying to do a lunch tourney, how can you NOT want it to be a crapshoot fairly early?

Three- Blue and green are both worth T10. Red are T50. White are T100. That cuts down on chip changing as much as is possible, with this set. It also makes higher denom changing possible, without crippling the person coloring down.

(these are plastic Bicycle chips, aren't they?)

10 mixed + 5 red + 4 white= T750 total

Start blinds T10/20
Ending blinds for 5 players T100/200 (depends on how weak-tight the play is)

Progress however you want, but set the last level to start 10-15 minutes before your "must quit" time. Assuming an hour:
10/20 (15 minutes)
20/40 (15 min)
30/60 (10 min)
50/100 (10 min)
100/200 (10 min)

Learn to deal and shuffle quickly.

Thanks alot for the replies lads. Now i have a tough decision to decide which one i should try out first, so that we are able to finish in one hour.

PantsOnFire: Your distribution allows for more than five players, which we *sometimes* have six or seven that want to play. But, seeing as we need to try and finish in one hour, (which we rarely did with the old chip distribution and blinds), should i remove one blue chip so that everyone starts with t200 and the blinds at 1/2 so that everyone starts with exactly 100 big blinds and no more?

Lottery Larry: They are actually diced chips with dice round the edge that my mum bought from Florida (I think, I live in the UK). Your chip distribution doesn't allow for five or six players but i agree that it should be more of a crapshoot given the alloted time.

Use pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters instead - altogether you probably have more of those than you have chips. But if you have $10 worth of change, go to Sears and buy some more of those dice chips - you can get rolls of 50 for $5.

It doesn't matter WHERE you start, only where you end. The level you're out at needs to have the BB = 10-15% of the average stack, heads-up.

What Pants didn't say in his post is- most rounds are 5 minutes long, to fit in your schedule. You can even start with a couple of 10 minute rounds, if you want.

Mine most certainly does 5 players- it leaves exactly 5 white chips unused, in order to insure you end in an hour... and you can color up the blue/green chips at Round 4, if you'd like.


You didn't mention 6 players in your OP:

4 of 6 players get:
10 mixed + 4 red + 4 white = T700

1 of 6 gets:
5 mixed + 5 red + 4 white = T700

Last player gets:
5 mixed + 3 red + 5 white = T700

That leaves 1 red chip unused- throw it in the first pot if you'd like, or rotate the bonus chip each tourney, or give it as a BB bonus or something.
Personally, I recommend the "host bonus for organizing and providing eqpt" bonus, myself :P

Same blinds as before, or try this for more starting play:
10/20 (25 minutes)
20/40 (10 min)
50/100 (10 min)
100/200 (10 min)

Let us know what you come up with and how it works. And charge everyone a buck or two every game, to go towards buying more chips!

However, you won't be able to change the amount of the SS or the final blinds- time limit is paramount. You just won't have to make change that often.

I kinda figured you only had about an hour. Well, unfortunately, you can only deal about 30 hands in an hour so that alone by default would make the game a crapshoot regardless of what blinds or chips you came up with.

You might want to consider a game going over two or three lunch hours (i.e. take note of the blind level and chip stacks when breaking the game up) or you might consider a cash game.

The number of chips you have is only a small factor that can be overcome by doing either my suggestion or Larry's. But your time limit is the real trouble.

Good out of the box thought, POF. Only problem is shutting out knocked-out players for a whole day

Buy more chips!

Knocked-out players get to practice shuffling and dealing!

Do the same startstack but these blindlevels:

5/5
5/10
10/20
15/30
20/40
30/60
40/80
50/100

If you want a quicker game you could ditch the 15/30 and 30/60

Green & Blue = 25
White = 100
Red = 500

Each player gets 10 green/blue, 5 white, 5 red ($3250 total)

Blinds:
25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400

If you play 20 minutes each, you should be able to go 1 1/2 to 2 hours.