Tourney Beating a dead donkey: How coloring up works + Breakdown for 20-players with addons and rebuys (3 Viewers)

pipdenny

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Hi all,

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I want to get this straight once and for all and I feel dizzy reading all the past threads.

I know that for a single table, 10-player T25 tournament 10K starting stack (12/12/5/6), the breakdown below is highly recommended
120 x T25
120 x T100
50 x T500
75 x T1000
35 x T5000

However, if I would like to run the occasional 2 table, 20-player T25 base tournament I would need to adjust the starting stack to 8/8/4/7, and I found the following breakdown:
160 x T25
160 x T100
80 x T500
140 x T1000
60 x T5000

Using this breakdown, after all players have bought in, there will only be the 60x T5000 chips remaining. I will need max 40 in the rare case that everyone uses their rebuy chip, and the remaining 20 would be used for 50% starting stack addons. (I would imagine it is very unlikely that all 20 players will bust out and rebuy before the rebuy period ends, but it is likely that all remaining players will choose to addon to their stacks)

My main question is how the coloring up would work exactly and if the breakdown above is equipped for rebuys, addons, and color ups for a 20-player tournament. My group is used to playing with non-denominated dice chips and our starting stacks and breakdowns never required coloring up. Essentially, I will be introducing the concept of a T25 base structure to them and we will start to play much more similarly to casino tournies.

Are the T5000 chips the only chips used for coloring up? Will the above breakdown take care of all rebuys, addons, as well as color ups?

Finally, has it ever been an issue that rebuys are only done with 2x T5000 chips? Is it possible that players busting early will cause there to be too many T5000 chips out there too soon? My concern would be about making change for the newly re-bought player so that he has sufficient low-denom chips to make the bets he needs to, and if this will cause any problems if there isn't a major chip leader at each table to make the change while still having enough low-denoms himself.

Has anyone ever ran into problems like this in their tournies? Again, I am very new to this type of structure so I am not really sure how it all works.



My wife very generously gave me a 'gift card' for CPC chips and I plan to design a custom set. I wanted to have my breakdown and plan absolutely straight for when I am ready to build the set.

Thank you all so much!
 
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paging @BGinGA

I went with this breakdown:

160 x T25
160 x T100
80 x T500
160 x T1000
25 x T5000
15 x T25000

so
20 x T1000
25 x T5000
15 x T25000

left for rebuys & color-up

Based on table balance...I can do 4 rebuys with 5x1K & 1X5K, +5th rebuys with 2x5K....
In tournies I prefer to keep tempo up and stay efficient with chip stacks...
 
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if I would like to run the occasional 2 table, 20-player T25 base tournament I would need to adjust the starting stack to 8/8/4/7, and I found the following breakdown:
160 x T25
160 x T100
80 x T500
140 x T1000
60 x T5000

My main question is how the coloring up would work exactly and if the breakdown above is equipped for rebuys, addons, and color ups for a 20-player tournament.
The 600-chip tournament set breakdown shown above is designed to *occasionally* acommodate 20 players with smallish T10K starting stacks (8/8/4/7). In this particular usage, 13x of the 60x T5000 chips in the set are used for color-ups of the T25 (1), T100 (4), and T500 (8) chips, leaving 47x T5000 chips for other purposes such a larger starting stacks, re-buys, add-ons, and/or bonus chips.

The typical re-buy rate in most tournaments is between 25%-33%, and many sets are designed to acommodate a 50% re-buy rate to allow for the rare larger-than-average outlier event. A 50% re-buy rate requires 20x T5000 chips of the 47 available T5000 chips, leaving 27 chips for other purposes -- such as using 20 chips for up to 20x 1/2-stack add-ons, or using 20 chips for larger T15K starting stacks (although re-buys would then be limited to 35%, which is more than sufficient in nearly all cases). With no re-buys or add-ons, 20 starting stacks of up to T20K are possible (by using 40 more of the 47 available T5000 chips).

However, if wanting to do invoke ALL of those options simultaneously for 20 players, you need to add more T5000 chips to the base set. The more you want to do simultaneously, the more T5000 chips you will need.

And if planning on running 20-player events regularly, I recommend increasing the numbers to 240/240/100/150/x to acommodate 12/12/5/6 starting stacks (preferred) with T1000s used for T25/T100 color-ups. Adding extra T1000 chips to the set also allows the use of 5x T1000 chips as part of the re-buy stacks, which makes things easier.

A 900-chip 240/240/100/200/100/20 set can handle pretty much anything you throw at it with two tables.
 
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My main question is how the coloring up would work exactly
Exactly? Ohh boy.

Let's say you have 4 players and are coloring up the T25 chips. The players have the following numbers in their stacks:
Player 1 1•T25
Player 2 8•T25
Player 3 10•T25
Player 4 29•T25

You exchange what you can immediately with higher denominations:
Player 1 1•T25 - 0 = 1•T25 left, receives 0•T100
Player 2 8•T25 - 8 = 0•T25 left, receives 2•T100
Player 3 10•T25 - 8 = 2•T25, receives 2•T100
Player 4 29•T25 - 28 = 1•T25, receives 2•T100 + 1•T500

Now, using a shuffled deck, you proceed to race for the remainder. Each player receives one card for each remaining T25 chip in their possession. The total number of remaining T25 chips is 4, so you are looking to race for a single T100 chip.

You distribute one card to player 1, zero to player 2, two to player 3, and 1 to player 4. Here's what you have now:
Player 1 (1T25), :6s:
Player 2 (0T25), no cards
Player 3 (2T25) :2c:, :6d:
Player 4 (1T25) :3h:

Since you are only giving out one T100 and there is a tie by players 1 and 3, you must break the tie. So you peel off two more cards:
Player 1 :as:
Player 3 :kd:
Finally, player 1 receives the last T100 chip, completing the race and finishing the color up.

If you are distributing more than one chip via a race, the second chip simply goes to the next highest card. If you are distributing two chips via the race and two players have the same high card, there is no tie - they each receive a chip. So in the above example, if you had two T100 chips to distribute, player 1 and 3 each receive one for their high card 6.

Are the T5000 chips the only chips used for coloring up?
You can use any value for color up. The specific denomination will depend on what kind of tournament you are running, how many players are involved, and how many chips are being taken off the table. The previous posts outline some of these considerations.

Finally, has it ever been an issue that rebuys are only done with 2x T5000 chips?
I would not rely on that being the case. Rebuys should generally be scaled to the current blinds, at least to some extent. If there is a player with a large enough chip stack to singularly swap a T5k for smaller denominations, then you could consider such a rebuy. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself how likely it is that someone uses a large rebuy denomination as part of a bet which is not an all-in. If it's unlikely, don't do it.
 
You distribute one card to player 1, zero to player 2, two to player 3, and 1 to player 4. Here's what you have now:
Player 1 (1T25), :6s:
Player 2 (0T25), no cards
Player 3 (2T25) :2c:, :6d:
Player 4 (1T25) :3h:

Since you are only giving out one T100 and there is a tie by players 1 and 3, you must break the tie. So you peel off two more cards:
Player 1 :as:
Player 3 :kd:
Finally, player 1 receives the last T100 chip, completing the race and finishing the color up.
Or, you could use suit rankings to break the tie. In your example, the:6s: beats the :6d:.
 
In my experience, this suggestion doesn't go over well with the players. But mileage probably varies depending on how familiar they are with games that integrate ranked suits.
I agree with that. I don’t even like it when they use “suit rankings” to decide who opens in stud. But I guess that’s better than the alternative.
But back on topic, you’ll probably get some blowback on using 100s to color up 25s. I prefer using the biggest chips possible.
 
Awesome info here guys thanks so much!

We only play with 20 people maybe twice a year, so maybe the 600 chip breakdown will do for now. We usually have 10-13.

Im sure many of the concepts illustrated here will become much clearer once we start playing and get used to the T25 base format. I have my CPS tourney set for now so after a few games I can really get a better idea of what we need and how this format works.

I will surely be referring back to your replies over and over again In the future like an encyclopedia, so thanks again!!
 
Suit rankings are used to break ties in poker except for when awarding pots. This includes bring-ins and chip-races.

It's fine to use T100 chips to color-up T25 chips; they just should be obtained from a player at the table by the TD, not introduced into the game from the bank.

Best practice is for the TD to only intoduce chips that will be needed for subsequent play and will not be later removed -- which is why using T1000 and/or T5000 chips are typically introduced to replace T25 and T100 chips. TD makes change with the largerst stack and uses the change to color-up the remaining players.

It is often faster and more efficient to have players 'sell' their to-be-removed chips to the biggest stack, minimizing the number and size of the individual transactions performed by the TD during color-up.

Lots of posts on PCF regarding the color-up process, both the race-off and round-up methods, along with which chips to use and why.
 
I've found this to be helpful.
That video is flawed, however. Although the presenter shows the correct mechanics for conducting a chip race, his actual procedure for dispensing the color-up chips is incorrect.

A tie between two (or more) players during a chip race is not broken by 'kicker' (nor are additional cards dealt to determine the winner) -- the card of higher suit wins (using the traditional spades - hearts - diamonds - clubs highest-to-lowest order, reverse alphabetical order).

The key components of the chip-race method of color-up are: 1) The highest card (by rank) on the board is awarded the first color-up chip, as are subsequent color-up chips if more than one, 2) no player can collect more than one color-up chip regardless of card distribution or number of extra chips or numbrt of cards he was dealt, and 3) no player can be eliminated from the tournament by losing all of his chips in a chip race.

The round-up method of the color-up process eliminates the dealing of cards, and after swapping out the lowest-denomination chips for actual value, each player with extra lowest-denomination chips receives one color-up chip. This tends to be a quicker color-up method, and no player is ever left with fewer chips after the color-up than he had beforehand.

Key components of the round-up method are: 1) all players with extra chips are awarded a single color-up chip for their extra chip(s), 2) no player can collect more than one color-up chip for extras regardless of the number of extra chips he has, and 3) no player is ever eliminated by the round-up process (since his extra chips are always rounded-up and awarded a color-up chip).
 
Great video here :

Only thing is that he rounds up instead of doing a proper chip race.

This was actually the video that spawned my questions. I see he used a 5k chip to color up, but I was worried about the scenario in which there wasn't a big enough chip leader to make this happen. I suppose using T500 and T1000 instead for those scenarios would work too.
I still revisit this thread often to reread the posts until I fully internalize the concepts. It will certainly become much clearer once our tournaments start up again and I can practice.
 
This was actually the video that spawned my questions. I see he used a 5k chip to color up, but I was worried about the scenario in which there wasn't a big enough chip leader to make this happen. I suppose using T500 and T1000 instead for those scenarios would work too.
I still revisit this thread often to reread the posts until I fully internalize the concepts. It will certainly become much clearer once our tournaments start up again and I can practice.

It's better to color-up T25 and T100 with T1000. Especially if you've less than 10 x T1000 in the starting stacks.
 
This was actually the video that spawned my questions. I see he used a 5k chip to color up, but I was worried about the scenario in which there wasn't a big enough chip leader to make this happen. I suppose using T500 and T1000 instead for those scenarios would work too.
I still revisit this thread often to reread the posts until I fully internalize the concepts. It will certainly become much clearer once our tournaments start up again and I can practice.

If you put no T5000 chips in the starting stacks, and if the starting stack itself was bigger than T5000, mathematically, at least one player has to be above that unless there has been a move of a big stack to a different table to balance player counts.

With a T5000 starting stack, the worst case scenario would be players 1-4 have exactly T4975, player 5 having T5000, and players 6-9 having T5025. Maybe in this case it would be better to plan to use 2-3 T1K chips and spread them among a few different players.

In a T10K that would be a non issue. Assuming the same plus-minus as above, players 1-4 would have exactly T9975, and player 5 would have T10000, and players 6-9 would have an average of T10025. Someone would likely be well over that and can take a T5K chip. (Even a player with T11K could probably absorbe a T5K chip in his stack comfortably.)

The only real pitfall I could see with this approach is that if someone amasses like 60% or more of the chips on the table and then that player gets drawn to move to a different table for balancing or whatever, then it would be a sticky situation. But if that comes up, host can adjust the plan to instead complete the color up using 2-3 T1K chips instead. But I think well over 95% of cases, that won't come up.

But the reason to use bigger chips is that it most home tournaments (say 40 players or under) it only really makes sense to introduce denominations to the chip economy that will be in use at the end of the tournament, instead of adding denominations that will be removed in the next color up or two.
 
If you put no T5000 chips in the starting stacks, and if the starting stack itself was bigger than T5000, mathematically, at least one player has to be above that unless there has been a move of a big stack to a different table to balance player counts.

With a T5000 starting stack, the worst case scenario would be players 1-4 have exactly T4975, player 5 having T5000, and players 6-9 having T5025. Maybe in this case it would be better to plan to use 2-3 T1K chips and spread them among a few different players.

In a T10K that would be a non issue. Assuming the same plus-minus as above, players 1-4 would have exactly T9975, and player 5 would have T10000, and players 6-9 would have an average of T10025. Someone would likely be well over that and can take a T5K chip. (Even a player with T11K could probably absorbe a T5K chip in his stack comfortably.)

The only real pitfall I could see with this approach is that if someone amasses like 60% or more of the chips on the table and then that player gets drawn to move to a different table for balancing or whatever, then it would be a sticky situation. But if that comes up, host can adjust the plan to instead complete the color up using 2-3 T1K chips instead. But I think well over 95% of cases, that won't come up.

But the reason to use bigger chips is that it most home tournaments (say 40 players or under) it only really makes sense to introduce denominations to the chip economy that will be in use at the end of the tournament, instead of adding denominations that will be removed in the next color up or two.

Very well said.
I worry more that the 5k chip will make up too much of their stack such that it may be a little more complicated to make small bets. Again, this is probably a nonissue as you mention, I just don't have the experience to fully realize it yet.
 
I want to say that there is so much great information and ideas in this thread! I am looking to start running better set up tournies shortly I have learned a lot here. In the past I jut took the chips I had and divided them between the number of players. No rebuys, no color-ups. It is pitiful to look back on, LOL.

I decided on a 20K 12/12/5/6/2 starting stack. With only needing a few more T100s, I can run a 20 person freezeout or fewer people with rebuys.

As I went through the pros and cons and chip needs of different starting structures, I came up with a question. When running a T20K tourny, at what number of players do you really need to add in T25K color-up chips for the final table rounds?
 
What is an ideal breakdown for a 5k starting stack with the same chip breakdown of: 160/160/80/140/60?

8/8/4/2? - if so, this would use all of the T25 and T100 chips. How would rebuys be approached in terms of denominations?
 
What is an ideal breakdown for a 5k starting stack with the same chip breakdown of: 160/160/80/140/60?

8/8/4/2? - if so, this would use all of the T25 and T100 chips. How would rebuys be approached in terms of denominations?
I'm not following your question. a T25 base T5K with 8/8/4/2 breakdown and 2 rebuys only needs 96/120/72/24 for the chips for a total of 302 chips (with color ups). If you had a 600 chip set youd have plenty left.
 
What is an ideal breakdown for a 5k starting stack with the same chip breakdown of: 160/160/80/140/60?

8/8/4/2? - if so, this would use all of the T25 and T100 chips. How would rebuys be approached in terms of denominations?

The idea is to do rebuys in bigger chips so either 5*T1000 or 1*T5000 in this case.

This approach takes advantage of the assumption that there are enough small chips in play as of the first hand of the tournament. It also makes it easier for the TD to issue since the td is often playing, and means fewer chips needed to bulk the sent to accomodate reentries.

So in the example you gave, if you needed exactly the right number of chips for 20 entries and no reentries, you would need 160/160/80/40. To accomodate say 10 reentries, would you rather add 10*22 chips for more standard stacks, or 10*5 T1000 chips.

And yes, there is a lot of moar is better on PCF, but small denominations in tournaments are an exception, because tournaments require color ups. So adding more T25s and 100s beyond the amount at the start is just calling for more chips to be removed anyway.

Hope this helps.
 
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So in the example you game, if you needed exactly the right number of chips for 20 entries and no reentries, you would need 160/160/80/40. To accomodate say 10 reentries, would you rather add 10*22 chips for more standard stacks, or 10*5 T1000 chips.
But this breakdown leaves nothing for color-ups. for a 20 player start he would need 160/200/120/100. Rebuys are going to need more 500 and 1000 chips
 
But this breakdown leaves nothing for color-ups. for a 20 player start he would need 160/200/120/100. Rebuys are going to need more 500 and 1000 chips
You won't need more T500 chips on the table (and if you do, then the starting stacks were insufficient and should be corrected).

Using T1000 chips for re-buys works well when the number of existing T1000 chips is small, and works best when the number of starting T25/T100 chips is large (aka, 12/12/x vs only 8/8/x).

What is an ideal breakdown for a 5k starting stack with the same chip breakdown of: 160/160/80/140/60?

8/8/4/2? - if so, this would use all of the T25 and T100 chips. How would rebuys be approached in terms of denominations?
Your question points out the problems of using small starting stacks while also trying to offer re-buys. There aren't enough small denomination chips in play to adequately make change if using large denomination chips for re-buys. And if trying to construct re-buy stacks using smaller denominations to avoid the change issue, those small denom chips are better served being in the starting stacks instead and being in play from the beginning (which also makes it easier to use high denom chips for re-buys). It's a vicious circle.
 
This was actually the video that spawned my questions. I see he used a 5k chip to color up, but I was worried about the scenario in which there wasn't a big enough chip leader to make this happen. I suppose using T500 and T1000 instead for those scenarios would work too.
I still revisit this thread often to reread the posts until I fully internalize the concepts. It will certainly become much clearer once our tournaments start up again and I can practice.
The goal of colorup is the clean the table up and allow easier movement of large amounts. You just do the best you have with your largest denominations to clear off the smaller ones. In some cases you may have to use lesser value chips but the goal is to make large chip movements easier at the end stages of the tourney, when one guy may want to shove in half the $$amount of all the chips in play.
There are many ways to do this as evidenced above, but don’t lose sight of the goal
 
You won't need more T500 chips on the table (and if you do, then the starting stacks were insufficient and should be corrected).

Using T1000 chips for re-buys works well when the number of existing T1000 chips is small, and works best when the number of starting T25/T100 chips is large (aka, 12/12/x vs only 8/8/x).


Your question points out the problems of using small starting stacks while also trying to offer re-buys. There aren't enough small denomination chips in play to adequately make change if using large denomination chips for re-buys. And if trying to construct re-buy stacks using smaller denominations to avoid the change issue, those small denom chips are better served being in the starting stacks instead and being in play from the beginning (which also makes it easier to use high denom chips for re-buys). It's a vicious circle.
I understand. Is it just better to start with 10k stacks at t100 then? I just want the tournament to end in about 4 hours so starting with 100+ bb seems like that won’t happen. Especially with rebuys.
 
As I went through the pros and cons and chip needs of different starting structures, I came up with a question. When running a T20K tourny, at what number of players do you really need to add in T25K color-up chips for the final table rounds?
A good rule of thumb is that the largest chip should be no more than 50% of the chips in play. So for a 20 person, 10k tournament, there would be 200k in play. Would you even bother putting out 4 25k chips? I wouldn't bother with 25k until you could put a full barrel in play (500k). So the tourney overall would need at least 1 million in chips in play.

But it would depend on your chipset. Let's say there was 900k in play. Your set would need to have around 90 5k chips and 450 1k chips to handle that without using 25k chips.
 
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But this breakdown leaves nothing for color-ups. for a 20 player start he would need 160/200/120/100. Rebuys are going to need more 500 and 1000 chips
True, I was just focused on the quantity needed for the actual starting stacks. Typically with a base T25 structure, I would suggest 1 extra T1000 per player to compensate of the T25 and T100 chips in the starting stack when doing 8 of each. In a 4 hour tournament, those two color ups are usually necessary.

To the main point of @Lent53 's question, By planning higher chips for your re-entries (just adding chips not players) there are basically 3 parts of a tournament set buy.

1) Starting Stacks

This is fairly obvious, figure out your preferred starting stack and multiply by the players. In this case 8/8/4/7 * 20 of T25/100/500/1000

Total 160/160/80/140, 460 chips, 23 per player.

2) Color Ups

Figure out which color ups will generally be required and get additional large chips to account for their removal. In this case, pretty typically T25 and T100 will be colored up in this sort of tournament so for sure add 1 T1000 chip per player. If you think you will get into coloring up T500 chips 2 T5000 chips per 5 players. (Five starting stacks have T10000 in T500 chips between them.)

So times 20 players, this part requires 20 additional T1000 and 5 additional T5000 chips., 25 more chips, a little more than 1 per player.

3) Re-entry Chips

Figure out your estimated re-entry rate. I think planning 50% is usually sufficient with a decent structure, but I think this part is pretty subjective, and often just rounds the set to a nice number. In this case if we figure 10 re-entries is what we want to accommodate, we need two T5000 chips per player to do that.

10 * 2 = 20 chips.

So this gives a total minimum set of 160/160/80/160/25 of T25/100/500/1000/5000 for a total of 585, add 15* T5000 to make a full barrel to get 600.

If you play to reissue re-entries with full starting stacks, you have to plan 10 * 23 more chips as in part 1, instead of 10*2 more chips in part 2. And again, a re-entry does not add players, it only adds to the tournament chips in play. You would assume the chips you put in the starting stacks are sufficient for the number of players you have, take advantage of that fact to simplify the tournament planning.

Now I understand the nature of @Lent53 's question is actually about switching to a T5K starting stack with the set planned for T10K stack. And I think the answer is I wouldn't change anything other than plan to issue re-entries with T1000 chips instead of T5000 chips, but you still don't need to plan any more low chips than what are necessary for the number of players you can host. With only two T1000 chips per player on the table, introducing T5000 chips may create a scenario where it is tough to break a T5000 chip unless one player happens to have a quarter of the T1000 chips in play. With 7 T1000 chips per player in the in a T10K starting stack, it's much easier to break T5000 chips.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

Bottom line, assume the small chips you put in the initial starting stacks are sufficient, if they aren't change the starting stacks, not the re-entry stacks. Introduce big chips when coloring up. @Chris Manzoni 's video above shows how to bring in a big chip from the bank and who to look for to make change. His advice is a little different than what @BGinGA and I are saying since he is just bringing in one T5000 chip instead of a number of T1000 chips, but the principles are the same, find a player on the table to make change for a big chip and use those chips to color up the T25s to T100s. (And later T100s to T500s.) Do not introduce new T100s (or T500s) to do this, they will just be removed again at the next color up.

Good questions and good luck,

Justin
 

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