Hey guys im curious as to how many of each chip i should get in the 1000 piece set i will be purchasing. We will mostly be playing .25/.50 and occasionally .50/1.00 or higer though that would be rare. I'm sort of a fan of having plenty small denomination chips, i feel like it starts the game off comfortably. I dont believe i need denominations higher than 5 dollars as a place i know nearby that runs 1/2 just uses 1's and 5's that i have seen. I want to have the perfect amount of each chip. May buy in will typically be 50-100. Please give me your opinions, i want to do it the right ray. Thanks in advance, ill be checking back here often

I used to have single table games at my house years ago and wouldn't have over a $5 chip and rarely ran out of chips. If stacks got huge cash would play, either $10 or $20 bills depending if it was 25/50 or 50/1. Is it single table or many that will be running?

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Thanks for your response. Itll just be one table. Probably tunning 7-8 hours two nights a week. Picking up a table fromm bbo as well it looks. Trying to make everything perfect

For a recently ended 0.25 0.50 game, the first 4 to buy in got 20 quarters, 20 dollars ($25) and the balance in $5 chips. The next 4 got 20 dollars, and the rest in $5. TBH, I tried to get more dollars on the table, often giving an extra stack (20) dollars to get 100 on the table.

If I wanted lots of chips, planned to keep 1000 chips on hand, had a big enough table to handle big stacks etc... would have been a stack of quarters and 2 stacks of dollars to each, and topping off with $5 chips. I also kept $10 chips when we got deep, and a stack of non-denom chips if we got really deep.

For a 10 person game, thats 200 quarter chips, 400 dollar chips and the balance in $5 chips brings the bank to $2350. If you think you'll want/need a bigger bank, sub out the last 100 $5 chips for $20 or $25 chips. I like the idea of $20 chips for rebuys, but it's personal preference.

I think you'll be good with 100 quarters on the table to start, and 400 dollar chips should make for enough chips not to worry about making change. There are generally guys who will run out of small chips all the time, regardless of starting stacks. Maybe a couple of players who like to hoard the small chips as well.

For the $1/2 casino games, there is rarely a need for chips bigger than $5, so your game should function just fine.

Thanks for your input. So what exactly do you recommend, just .25 chips and 1.00 chips? I plan to get a 1000 piece set, i figure why not. So should i up the amounts and throw some $5 chips in there and how many? Is there any necessity for .50 chips?

OK! You are my kind of host, no reason to play with a set that is tight for chips. A thousand chips is a fine sized set.

To begin, I would start with 200 $0.25 chips. This will be enough for two tables if needed, but I would use all of them even at one table. At a ten player table that would be 20 chips each.

Your one and five dollar chips will be your workhorse chips for most games, so 300 each for those denominations.

These 800 chips represent $1,850 in bank - likely enough to fully serve a single table $0.25/$0.50 game.

You mention $0.50/$1.00 or perhaps higher. Reason enough to bring in $25s and even $100s. I suggest 150 $25 chips and 50 $100. That will raise your bank to $10,600. Enough to support a robust $1/$2 game.

You might never have a need for the highest value chips, but I would get some anyway. If you were certain about never playing higher than $0.25/$0.50, 500 $5s would serve (and might work out ok for $0.50/$1.00) But if there is any question of playing $1/$2 or higher then get the $25s and $100s.

DrStrange

PS There are reasons why casinos and underground games use mountains of $5s rather than larger chips. First there is a security issue that is solved by using only low value chips. Second, there are all sorts of angle shots and special rulings when someone tries to use large chips to make smaller bets. Third, you can't "Hide" a barrel of $5 chips like you can hide a $100 chip. I am sure some of the professional dealers and floor folks have other reasons as well.

PPS for what it is worth, my primary $0.25/$0.50 set is 200 quarters, 300 ones, 300 fives and 100 twenties. All from the closed Outpost Casino in California

We have a regular cash game every Friday for the past several years. We have 9 to 12 players each session coming and going. We play .25-.50 like you plan on doing. Here's our chip set up.

I set up 10 racks of $20 ---20 .25 chips, 10 $1 chips, and 1 $5 in each rack. We have some .25 and $1 chips extra, but not a lot.
Players take a rack and can add extra $5 chips up to a $50 buy in cap. Most rebuys are in $5 chips increments. We have a larger amount of $5 chips in reserve for this.
We have a few larger value chips $20 available but they are seldom used.

If you want to stay close to traditional colors then I might suggest .25 chips (blue) $1 chips (white) 5$ chips (Red) and larger denominations (green)

If you play $1-$2 with a larger buyin then more $1s and $5s may be needed depending on how many players you have. Best of luck with your home game.

No problem. I do think having $5 chips solves a lot of practical issues. Always having to count down bets with $1 and 25c chips can be a real PITA. I don't think that there is much need for the larger ($20+) chips, but I'd get some anyway.

As mentioned by DrStrange, there are reasons NOT to get largest denomination chips in play. It's possible for someone to spend a little money, and buy chips that are redeemable at your game for a lot of money. People can hide them and/or angle with them when making bets. If think having a limited number of 'largest denomination' chips for when there have been multiple full rebuys, is OK, but you will want to 'track' them. It's one reason that I think cash is better than 'largest denomination' chips for some games.

Starting with 80 - 200 quarters on the table should be fine. I think I got 200 for my starting set, but found that I prefer using 80. TBH, using 60 would have the same result. People who need change, are the ones that bet all their small chips to get rid of them. You could force them to buy in for all quarters, and they would still need change.

Dollars were the big workhorse chips, but we had some space concerns, and that somewhat limited the number of chips. I think having at least 20 per player is a good place to start (see above) and quite frankly, if my crowd was better at handling/stacking/counting chips, we'd probably be good with just quarters and dollars. I also got 200 in my starting order, ended up getting some more, but found that 200 is fine for our 8 handed game.

When I think about the casino table, and hundreds of $5 chips (2.5BB), I realize that in our home game, the $1 (2BB) chips should suffice. People do like having $5 chips, and as mentioned, they aren't good about h/s/c chips to begin, so the $5s are helpful. After getting half the players 20, and the other half 40 dollar chips, the $5 makes it easy to finish buy-ins and rebuys.

It's always easier to order more chips in a denom than you are going to use, and not use them; than it is to need to order more.

If the stakes are going to increase to a point where you need to start using more of the larger denomination chips than you have, then there may be other considerations at that time too. It's much longer off than you think.


Good Luck. Keep asking. There are guys who have been where you are before and just want to help.


1000 chips is a lot to lug around. I bought a couple of 'birdcage' carriers and leave a 400 chips set on location (where we usually play shorthanded OFC or shorthanded short BI NLH). The rest are home, ready to be used if we change stakes, numbers of players, etc.

I received this response on another forum, seems kegit as do all of yours. How do you feel about this? His total cane out to be 500 chips total and im buying a 1000 piece set, so i thought maybe bumping it to 300 qtrs, 350 ones, and 100 fives? Then ill have 750 & id like to add 100 twenty-fives, and 50 fiftys? As follows is his initial insight, and this has been what i think id like to do.

Thanks guys. Wvhillbiy, how many of each denom if i went with those three do you think would be good? Also how much would it cost roughly for a set like yours thats customized in 1000 pieces? By the way this was a repsonse i received on another forum

"Originally Posted by BigBlue56 View Post
For a recently ended 0.25 0.50 game, the first 4 to buy in got 20 quarters, 20 dollars ($25) and the balance in $5 chips. The next 4 got 20 dollars, and the rest in $5. TBH, I tried to get more dollars on the table, often giving an extra stack (20) dollars to get 100 on the table.

If I wanted lots of chips, planned to keep 1000 chips on hand, had a big enough table to handle big stacks etc... would have been a stack of quarters and 2 stacks of dollars to each, and topping off with $5 chips. I also kept $10 chips when we got deep, and a stack of non-denom chips if we got really deep.

For a 10 person game, thats 200 quarter chips, 400 dollar chips and the balance in $5 chips brings the bank to $2350. If you think you'll want/need a bigger bank, sub out the last 100 $5 chips for $20 or $25 chips. I like the idea of $20 chips for rebuys, but it's personal preference.

I think you'll be good with 100 quarters on the table to start, and 400 dollar chips should make for enough chips not to worry about making change. There are generally guys who will run out of small chips all the time, regardless of starting stacks. Maybe a couple of players who like to hoard the small chips as well.

For the $1/2 casino games, there is rarely a need for chips bigger than $5, so your game should function just fine."

Just get yourself a nice 2500 piece set

I have a 1000 chip set for a .25/.50 game, and here is my set up:

.25 x 150
1 x 300
5 x 500
25 x 50

I've been using this set for 4+ years now, and I've had no issues with running out of chips.

I concur with the above, probably don't even need more than a rack of quarters on the table.

Quarters? You don't NEED more than a rack, some will be able to USE more.
You will not USE 350 quarters.

Ones? Your figure seems fine. Minimum is probably 2 racks.

Fives? 100 seems WAY OFF to me.

Larger? You might not NEED any, but they are handy for re-buys and as we all know those black chips sure are purdy! IMO, a barrel each would suffice.

If I were to get a 1000 chip set (I wouldn't though) I'd go 100 quarters, 400 ones. and 500 fives.

My 600 chip cash set is 80 quarters, 200 ones, 300 fives, and 20 25's. If I had a custom set I'd make 20's rather than 25's for ease in re-buys.

Good Luck.

My friendly game of .25/50 uses 1 chip as .50 and everything else as .25 we can run full ring plus a few rebuys with a couple sets of chips, after that we just buy chips off the big stacks and keep the $20 bills in play as $20 chips. Makes stacking up won lots easy, and people like shoving big stacks of chips for $5 and $10 bets.

Listen to the good Dr

We never have more than 100 .25 chips on one table. It's more than enough. I agree that the 1s are what you want the most of. We use 200 for a $40 buy-in. For larger buy-ins, I'd probably put out 300 $1 chips, but that is not absolutely necessary. The rest would be in $5s. I have 200 of those.

That adds up to 500-600 chips. That's plenty for most games, but if you have $100 buy-ins, you might need more. I'd get another 100-200 5s.

At a minimum, that's $25 in .25s, $200 in $1, and $1000 in 5s. If you think your game has more than $1,200 on the table, you'll need more 5s.

I never use more than three denoms unless I run out of $5s, which has rarely happened. I would want to get more $5s if I thought that was likely.

Having a 40-100 $20s or $25s might be good as a backup, but using only a few can lead to confusion, as they tend to get lost in player's stacks. If you do use them, make sure they are always front and center in everyone's stack.

I've actually reduced the number of $5 chips I put in play in order to get the $25s (and rarely the $100s) into play. Figured i spent the money to have them, so I want to see them get some use. Most of my players have casino experience, so they know to keep them on top or in front....those that don't get reminded

Go to your local Casino and get get a $500 in $1 chips. Use quarters. You can allow cash on the table ($20/$50/$100's) If you allow a $50 max, each player can get 50 $1 chips each. Above that, use cash.

i appreciate all the responses guy, really do. table is being ordered very soon & chips i think i may do tonight. im starting another thread for another question because i think it is a good one and something i can use info on, please delete it if its already been made elsewhere im in a bit of a rush