Transitioning to live poker NLHE, Noob home game.

What are the basic denominations for a set of 200 pieces/chips, 4 colors/stacks of 50 [red/white/black/blue] as compared to the standard rule of each player having 100 Big Blinds to start?



feel free to move if the wrong forum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_token

So, with colors, you can stick to the standard (people will assume a $25 is green unless they were raised in a strange place with strange rules) and you'll run into little trouble.

As far as getting your chips into use efficiently, you've got issues. 200 chips aren't a lot. In, for example, a 1/2 game, you probably want people to have a barrel each of $1's, and then be able to have multiple barrels of your betting chips - $5's. Assuming you want a 1/2 game where people can buy in for $300, you're going to be giving them each 76 chips to start. That's over 600 chips for a full table - before anyone re-buys.


What size cash games do you expect? That might help.

The whole idea behind having non-denominated chips is that you can tailor the values to your game. Without knowing details of your game, no one can really say what your breakdown should be.

Unfortunately, a set like yours is usually not optimal, because for any given game you have a blinds chip, one or two workhorse chips, and a high-value chip, and you generally want a lot more of the workhorse chips than the others. For instance, if you're playing 1/2NL, then the $1 chip is your blinds chip, $5 is your workhorse, and $25 is your high-value, and you need a lot more $5s than $1s or $25s.

Thanks all. At first, we are not going to be playing with cash, just for fun. Based on the info, How does this sound for a 1/2 game:

With the four stacks I will denote them $1 - $2.50 - $5 - $10. There are 50 of each stack, so with 4 people at the table, would that work or should I go 1-5-10-25? [is a large as 25 needed in this case]

The problem I am seeing is that We will run out of chips for the blinds very early as we only have 12 of the $1 chip; OR if we make the smallest chip the Big blind [$2], what do we use for the small blind?

You'd be better off issuing them each a stack of 1's, a stack of 5's, and a handful of bigger chips, $25 for example.

Don't get four colors on the table. Don't use some medium-size chip. Get all of your 5's in play and use the $25's for whatever you can't cover in 5's.

Or, don't make a larger chip at all. Let $20 bills (and only $20 bills) play on the table as cash.

"standard" colors go like this:
black = $100
green = $25
red = $5
white (or blue) = $1

at a home game, you can change this if you'd like, but people familiar with casino colors might get confused initially. In practice, I've seen very little problems -- people are pretty flexible. Still, I wouldn't use red as 25 at the same time greens are on the table as 5s. That would be a mess.

200 chips is really really tight for a full table. If you want to try it out, it can work. Once you decide your game will be a regular affair, I'd get more chips.

Always make each color worth 4 or 5 of another color. You'll want 1s, 5s, 25s, and maybe 100s -- not any 2s, 2.50s, or 10s. Don't worry about "running out" of blinds chips, just make change as needed. You'll need to make change a lot with your small set.

Are these "dice" chips? Blues and blacks can get confused easily, especially if the lighting is subdued, so ideally you don't use both at the same time. Another option is to make them the same value -- blues and blacks are 1, reds 5, greens 25. Unfortunately hat only gives you a 1550 "bank", which is not enough for a 1/2 game, or really even a 1/1 (two blinds, both $1, which works great at a home game. You can also do a single blind).

edit --
oops, your set has no greens. you could do
blue = 1
red = 5
white = 25
black = 100

you won't use many blacks, and people will treat them as "special" (get a sharpie and color the spots orange or something?). Your bank is quite large (5550), so you have room for lots of rebuys and deep stacks later in the evening. But with only 50 of each, you will be making change frequently.

Also, have you considered a tournament instead of a cash game? Sounds like this will be "play money" which really doesn't work in a cash game format. People need more incentive to treat the chips with value.

thanks all. good info.

Why are you limiting yourself to a 200 chip set? Why not spend a little (not much) more and get a 500 set which *should meet the needs of one table or 1000 which definitely will (and can support a second table if neccessary)?