I'm not that negative on dice chips. I play with them all the time, and they work pretty well as poker counters. It just sounds like you're configuring a set from loose chips, so you can control the mix of colors.

You can get dice in colors besides blue/white/red, and you can get other chips at a similar cost with more pleasant spots if you like. In particular with dice, blues get easily confused with both whites and blacks.

Back in the day, I had a lot of prints of Magic cards, as well as a handful of originals. Small format originals went for $250 or so, and signed numbered prints went for $40-ish, depending on the artist. [The 1st wife got the originals in the divorce. I still have a few key prints...]

It's easy to pop Jester's Cap into photoshop, trim the background and have it printed on your chips or felt, but as a guy who also makes media that's easily copied, I'd suggest at least contacting the artist and letting him know what you'd like to do.

I don't lose as much sleep over someone printing the Budweiser logo on their table, but the guys making magic cards are quite often literally starving artists - and a thank-you check goes a long way for them.

Dan Frazier originals appear to be $250-1000 each, he signs cards you mail him, and he sells prints for $10 each -- a great price. Consider contacting him if you want to put Jester's Caps on your chips. He seems quite reasonable...

http://www.danfrazier.com/artstore/magiccardlist.html

Also, if you put Jester's Caps on your chips, you've got a fairly good line of other Dan Frazier Jester's-related items to put on them as well. You could do a nice theme...

Hey! Some of us happen to like white $1 chips, TVYM.

If you think there's chip snobbery here, I'd stay away from ChipTalk.

I don't consider myself a chip snob - I own about 600 dice chips, and I play in a semi-regular cash game that uses them. That said, I prefer slightly better chips. I think the wide variety of China clays that are available now give you great bang for the buck. You can get prelabeled ("fantasy") chips, or get blanks and put custom labels on them yourself, for anywhere from 25-40 cents per chip.

But a big +1 on the crappy ABS sluggos that you get on ebay. I really dislike those chips, even though (again) I play in a regular game that uses them. They barely stack 10-high and they look, feel & sound like crap. I'd much rather play with dice chips.

That pic brings back memories. I can't remember the last time I played MtG, even though I've got a large box of cards upstairs in the closet. Sold off most of the valuable ones years ago, though.

OK, I'm really going to need this explained. You apparently think white chips are ugly but brown ones (which I've never even seen personally) are fine, as are black chips with blue spots. You consider blue dice chips to be easily confused with both white (I guess because of the edge spots?) and black chips, but see no problem with having brown and black chips in the same set. What?

Speaking of colours being confused, how come nobody ever seems to think that there's a problem with having red and green chips in the same set? Quite a few people are red-green colour-blind, after all. (And this is - let's face it - a game mostly played by men, and it's almost entirely men who are the colour-blind ones.) If I had to pick four colours for a set, they would probably be white, light blue, orange and black.

Is that another one of your fantasies, introducing 7-stud and razz into your home game? lol. You can avoid using ante chips by establishing a dealer ante (about equal to what you want the total antes to be), but then you have to make sure you play each game for a whole number of orbits. At a full table, it should be 1 SB and if you get shorthanded (4 or less) then use 0.5 SB.

lol, it's a question of taste, I guess.

White chips show grime faster than other colors, and (this is the taste part) look cheap to me. bland, meh, absence of color.

brown can be ugly, depending on the brown and what it's next to. I am accepting no criticism of my blacks with blue spots; I think they look lovely.

blue dice chips are the same as white dice chips with the chip and spot colors reversed. It's rather easy to mix a blue chip in a white stack and not notice. And put a black chip with white spots in a stack of blues with white spots, keep the lighting dim, and again it's really easy to build a dirty stack or misread a bet.

If you can avoid blue chips in dice sets, I'd recommend that.


my brown chips are much more easily confused with my reds than with my blacks. It's a question of how dark the brown is. Most "brown" chips are a light enough shade that they don't get confused with the blacks at all.

Also, being careful with your spot colors is important. My browns have white spots, and leap right out of a stack of my blacks-n-blues.

I worried a bit about this when designing my set, and asked a lot of people. Basically I found no evidence of red/green colorblindness causing confusion at a poker table. I guess there are enough clues besides the red/green hue that the colorblind guys have no problems. It might be wise to make the spots different between red and green, and keep the shades somewhat different. Most greens are fairly light, and most reds fairly dark, for example.

I HAVE played with a colorblind guy who has trouble reading chips occasionally, but curiously it's purples vs greens that throw him off.

Why? If anything, the button ante helps you NOT have to do full orbits, for any of the games. When going Blinds > Ante, move the button to the previous hand's UTG. When going Ante > Blinds, keep the button where it was the previous hand.

Even when I don't agree with you I usually at least understand what you're saying...but not this time.

Omaha

Player A: BTN
Player B: SB
Player C: BB
Player D: UTG
Player E: UTG+1

Stud 8

Player A: --
Player B: --
Player C: --
Player D: BTN ANTE
Player E: --

Basically the "BB moves".

So when going the other way...

Razz

Player A: --
Player B: --
Player C: BTN ANTE
Player D: --
Player E: --

Crazy Pineapple

Player A: --
Player B: --
Player C: BTN
Player D: SB
Player E: BB

Since Player C just paid the "blinds", Player C now gets the button.

That only works if you have a pre determined rotation of games, it doesn't work if you're playing dealer's choice.

I don't recommend changing games every deal. If you just want to move the button and do blinds/antes, then I'm never picking an ante game on my deal. No system really works well with that.

That's why you do a full orbit +1 with dealer's choice.

You can still have slightly odd blind results, in that the persons at or near the change when moving into and out of ante games may pay slightly differently...

Before Stud, the person calling stud paid the blinds, then during Stud, they possibly table-ante twice. The person picking a "normal" game after stud might miss a small blind.

We live with it...

Yeah, that can work. Or just one orbit each so that it's all fair no matter what. I've tried both methods.

I like to really get into a game. I tried 20 minutes, but it seemed that people were just getting into the flow right when the game changed, so now I do 30. With changing every orbit, everybody's too concerned with when this crappy game is going to be over, and less open to just sitting back and getting into it.

Every game is different, tho'. I find that's what's worked well in the gamed I've played.

With Oribt+1, I'm probably going to pick Omaha every time. I get the button twice!

We like a set order of games, so that everyone gets to have a voice in the mix they are going to play. With dealer's choice, I always end up playing too much of a game I dislike, because two people pick it every time.

But this doesn't mean you can't change the mix later in the game.

I run into this a fair amount, with people complaining of games they don't like, or even sitting out for those games. That's not to say you're one of those people; you just reminded me of it.

I encourage everybody to suck it up and grin and bear it. It seems especially odd for a mixed game advocate to complain about not liking games, because it's hard enough getting others to play mixed games in the first place. We've all see the resistant NLHE player bitch and moan about not knowing the games, then by the end of the evening realize how much fun it all was. Lead by example.

Nobody knows or likes all the games. That's sort of the point. You want others to play the games YOU choose, so play the games THEY like.

Again, not suggesting eneely is like this, merely reminded that I run into a lot of people who are.

Also, yellow chips are usually 1000s.

Having a set mix ensures you have a mix. When a couple of people get overly enamored with Omaha 8, it can take the entire freaking night. There is no mix.

I do agree with that. And I've certainly gotten grumpy at expectations not being met, so I'm not faulting it. But I've (hopefully) learned from it.

These days, I try to step back and realize that I'm playing poker with people who are enjoying themselves and playing games that aren't NLHE. How is that ever bad? If I'm a better poker player than my opponents, then I want to please them. If my opponents are better, then I want to learn from them. Besides, Omaha 8 is awesome.

It's another reason I like having longer rounds, because then even those who like a game agree that it's time to move on, and those who don't like certain games may stop being sourpusses after a few hands, and realize they're fun. If you're only playing for a hand or an orbit, you're too focused on when it will be over.

I'm all for keeping people happy. Including me. I like variety.

Ha, Jester's Cap.

I still have that card in a little plastic case in my old room at my parents' house. It's together with Grinning Totem.

My Uni cash game is 5p/10p with

5p
10p
20p
50p
£1

and then nothing bigger lol, and when someone rebuys, each rebuy is a huge array of change, the amount of time wasted from confusion and counting stacks is a joke

I assume that you haven't suggested that, for one night, they try it without the 20 pence chips.... because the action is too good from all of the "big" stacks?

FYP

I would probably use:

5p
25p
£1

That's turning it in to a 1/2 structure where the 5p=$1 and 25p=$5. Also frees up your other colors so you could have a few £5 chips for rebuys late in the game.

Small steps, gentlemen, small steps... when you're trying to change entrenched behavior.

though, halftilt gets +1, LL -1 I should have started with the 10p chips, not the 20p...