I was playing 1/2 yesterday and at my room $100 bills play. It is normal for the deep stacks to sell stacks to new players or people who busted and are reloading. I personally love having at least one bill on the table and I personally hate having more than 3 or 4 stacks. So I always volunteer to sell stacks when the situation is appropriate.

4 stacks fit perfectly on top of a bill and it makes it so much easier to shove. Just drag the bill forward and along come all the chips.

This said, yesterday there was a guy who flat out refused to sell any stacks. He had $1000+ in red chips in $150 stacks. Each time the dealer asked him, he would not sell any chips.

Is there any logical reason a person would not want to have bills on the table? I think it speeds the game up to sell a stack if you've got it. And as I stated previously, I actually prefer having the bill. This is not the first time I've encountered this. Every now and then I meet a player who just won't do it. Thoughts?

In exactly the same way that you prefer to have bills, he may prefer to have chips. Each is valid. He might find it easier to disconnect his chips from "money". That is a "logical" reason to have this preference.

To each his own? Maybe he got burned by a counterfeit bill before?

"Unlucky"
Counterfeit bills
Likes big stacks
Doesn't like having to count out his bills when someone asks for a count
Doesn't like guys with long hair

Worried about counterfeit bills?

Some people intentionally slow the game down in many ways, this may be one of them. Maybe he's a d-bag who likes to tilt the dealer and the rest of the table. Maybe he feels it gives him an "image." Maybe he's superstitious. You never know.

Maybe he wants to build an architectural masterpiece of chip tower magnificence to post on the CHIPSTACK thread.
I always find it hard to tell how much someone has behind with bills. If bills play, I deal with it. Players who stack bills behind their chips is a problem if they also have a lot of chips. When you have bills under your chips, are they hidden? Do you have problems with wrinkled bills making your chips fall over and making a mess? When you go all-in and slide this forward, how will the dealer count your bills? At least if you have to get more chips, you have reached the point where this is not a problem.

In my experience, if a player has bills behind his stacks, he most likely has you covered. Would you really need a count? And I don't mind asking someone how many bills they have or telling someone who asks me. This is a common occurrence at my game.

I wouldn't need or be entitled to a count from a player. You are right about him likely having some of the people covered at the table. The only question is if those people can see his bills and know where they stand.

Most likely he has some sort of irrational reason and he's convinced himself (maybe even subconsciously) that bills are unlucky.

I know a couple guys like this and one of them is one of the best players I know. This is a fairly recent thing for him, but he absolutely refuses to have a single bill in front of him, although up until about a year ago, it never bothered him. He can't cash in a bill he's won for chips quick enough. He claims this is just because he likes chips but I believe it's come to a point of some irrational "unlucky" feeling. He is also a stickler about topping off all the time (in games where it's aloud) to equal the big stack. I think he believes that a huge stack, bigger than everyone elses is intimidating and not having a single bill helps with that.

some people have their own personal superstitions - to each, his own.

Lol. This is exactly what I was thinking. Or maybe to take a picture with his phone to show to wife, buddy, etc. to show what a winning player he is.

No idea what his motivation is, but cash playing is a poor idea. There's no reason I should have to ask my opponents to count down their paper to get a clear idea of their stacks. The old angles about hiding other stuff in a wad of $100s are classic though hopefully rare. Dealers should carry $25 and $100 chips in the rack in big-bet games for quick conversion, though.

He might also subscribe to the limit-game conventional wisdom that lots of chips on the table are good for the game. Actually I don't see why this CW doesn't apply to big bet games.

(Mine is obviously a minority opinion.)

An opponent with 25 red chips covering three bills looks a lot like an opponent with 25 red chips covering six bills. Unless your stack is always < about $300 this reasoning doesn't make sense.

what's wrong with black chips? I can identify and count a stack of blacks pretty easily. not so with loose paper bills squished under a stack of reds.