Tourney A truly minimalist approach to a T500 breakdown (1 Viewer)

[Santa123]

Here is a truly minimalist approach to a T500 breakdown which, in my view, works well for 6 players and, if necessary, even up to 8 players. I have a few remaining chips that I would like to sell, but I’m not sure whether the breakdown might be too off-putting. I would really appreciate some feedback.

The breakdown is

20x 500
60x 1.000
80x 5.000
20x 25.000
180 chips total.

Since the breakdown is so minimalist, you should always put all T500, T1k, and T5k chips into play.

On average, even with 8 players, you would have more than 20 chips as a starting stack. And with 6 players you can hand out 30 chips per player.

The T500 chips in particular are very tight with just one barrel, but you never need to bet more than one chip anyway, and if you do actually run out, you can very easily make change from the pot.

A Blind Schedule could look like this:

T100k or bigger starting stacks.

500/500
500/1.000
500/1.500

1.000/2.000
1.500/3.000
2.000/4.000

3k/6k
4k/8k
6k/12k

8k/16k
10k/20k
15k/30k

...

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[TheRealStephen12]

I think it would be better to play with $30 dice chips from Walmart than try to play with just 180 chips. If you want a small set, 40/80/80/x gives 4/8/8/x for 10 players, which is probably the least you could get by with without having to make change nearly every bet.

 

[JustinInMN]

So I run T500 tournaments as my standard, just had one Saturday. Here are my thoughts.

Here is a truly minimalist approach to a T500 breakdown which, in my view, works well for 6 players and, if necessary, even up to 8 players. I have a few remaining chips that I would like to sell, but I’m not sure whether the breakdown might be too off-putting. I would really appreciate some feedback.

The breakdown is

20x 500
60x 1.000
80x 5.000
20x 25.000
180 chips total.

Since the breakdown is so minimalist, you should always put all T500, T1k, and T5k chips into play.

So you are mentioning 8 players but not specific about the starting stack breakdown other than getting all the first 3 denoms in play right away.

So uniform stacks are out the window unless you do 2/4/4/2 for a T75k starting stack.

If you are doing a few different stack types maybe something like 2 stacks of 4/8/8/2 and 6 stacks of 2/4/4/3 to make T100K happen.

I get that with T500 chips you can probably get away with 2 per player. The problem I am seeing is with the quantity of t1000s available. You may very well find yourself with a number of stacks with fewer than 5 T1000 chips that might make change making difficult.

My typical breakdowns for t500 is 6/12/12/x or 4/8/8/x and both work fine, but I really think the latter is the true minimum here. (Or alternatively 2/9/8/x if you really want to cut back on t500) With 6 players you are good, but more than that you really need 10-20 more t1000s and t500s. Otherwise, in practice, you would find yourself in difficult change spots requiring transaction with multiple players to consolidate chips needed to proceed.

Edit to add: here's the pr0n for 6/12/12/1 for T100K stacks

 

[JustinInMN]

So this was the best I could do dividing the chip set you specified for 8 players.

There are 2 different stack types:
(From left to right)

T50K (plus whatever t25 chips you want to add)
2 * 4/3/9
6 * 2/9/8

14 5k chips left over

So I might mark this as barely playable given on average the majority of players should have 5 or more T1000 chips so change making should be possible in most cases, but there may be a point where a couple players would be short and multiple transactions requires to accommodate bets sizes.

All that being said, just adding 10-20 t1000 solves a lot of these problems so I am curious why that would be prohibitive or the need to stay at 60?

 

[Santa123]

I think it would be better to play with $30 dice chips from Walmart than try to play with just 180 chips. If you want a small set, 40/80/80/x gives 4/8/8/x for 10 players, which is probably the least you could get by with without having to make change nearly every bet.

So I run T500 tournaments as my standard, just had one Saturday. Here are my thoughts.



So you are mentioning 8 players but not specific about the starting stack breakdown other than getting all the first 3 denoms in play right away.

So uniform stacks are out the window unless you do 2/4/4/2 for a T75k starting stack.

If you are doing a few different stack types maybe something like 2 stacks of 4/8/8/2 and 6 stacks of 2/4/4/3 to make T100K happen.

I get that with T500 chips you can probably get away with 2 per player. The problem I am seeing is with the quantity of t1000s available. You may very well find yourself with a number of stacks with fewer than 5 T1000 chips that might make change making difficult.

My typical breakdowns for t500 is 6/12/12/x or 4/8/8/x and both work fine, but I really think the latter is the true minimum here. (Or alternatively 2/9/8/x if you really want to cut back on t500) With 6 players you are good, but more than that you really need 10-20 more t1000s and t500s. Otherwise, in practice, you would find yourself in difficult change spots requiring transaction with multiple players to consolidate chips needed to proceed.

Edit to add: here's the pr0n for 6/12/12/1 for T100K stacks

Thank you very much for both of your replies. It’s perfect that you, @JustinInMN, have so much experience hosting T500-based tournaments.

Alright then, but what would be the minimum? As mentioned, the breakdown is not for me personally; I want to sell the chips. So with how many players would it actually be playable?

You both recommend a minimum starting stack of 4/8/8/x. That would put me at a maximum of 5 players. Do you really think it wouldn’t work with just three T500 chips? As I said, you never put more than one T500 chip in the pot anyway. And if you really run out, you could always bet one extra T1k and take a T500 back from the pot.

If I were to host the tournament with this breakdown, I would completely forgo uniform starting stacks.

I would just give the first player all the T500s and T1ks.

First player 20/60/6/0
and the rest of the player 0/0/10/2

Then let the first player give each player change.

On average each player has

with 8 players : 2.5/7.5/9.5/1.7

with 7 players : 2.8/8.5/10.8/1.7

with 6 players : 3.3/10/12.6/1.6

This way you have enough T1ks on the table. What do you think?

 

[Baxit]

If you want to go minimalist, isn'it better to use 1-5-4-5 ratios (as in T5-25-100-500) rather than 1-2-5-5 as in T500-1k-5k-25k ?

 

[JustinInMN]

Alright then, but what would be the minimum? As mentioned, the breakdown is not for me personally; I want to sell the chips. So with how many players would it actually be playable?

From a selling perspective I think 6 is playable. 8 is a squeeze though we went through the exercise that it's probably okay.

But I wouldn't say any more than that.

I would just give the first player all the T500s and T1ks.

First player 20/60/6/0
and the rest of the player 0/0/10/2

Then let the first player give each player change.

This is probably the pitch you would have to make to sell this as an 8 player set if a buyer were to ask. Not sure how well it would go over.

Tournament chip buyers, at least here on PCF have a bias toward identical starting stacks, so if the design is not toward that, you will add the complication of explanation to make the sale.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is going to be some added effort.

 

[Santa123]

From a selling perspective I think 6 is playable. 8 is a squeeze though we went through the exercise that it's probably okay.

But I wouldn't say any more than that.




This is probably the pitch you would have to make to sell this as an 8 player set if a buyer were to ask. Not sure how well it would go over.

Tournament chip buyers, at least here on PCF have a bias toward identical starting stacks, so if the design is not toward that, you will add the complication of explanation to make the sale.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is going to be some added effort.

Once again, thank you very much for your feedback! The conversation helped me a lot.

 

[maxim_666666]

Thanks to @JustinInMN for your contribution to this thread. I ended up buying these chips from the author and am very happy with them. I have seen these chips many times but never dared to buy them because I did not understand how I could use them.

We even ran a small 5-player game using the 4/8/8/2 setup. It worked very smoothly. I don't understand now why so many people recommend more than 4 (t500) chips for the T500. It's a waste of money.
Essentially, the t500 chips work in tandem with the T1000, and you only need 2-4 of them per Player.

 

[Santa123]

Thanks to @JustinInMN for your contribution to this thread. I ended up buying these chips from the author and am very happy with them. I have seen these chips many times but never dared to buy them because I did not understand how I could use them.

We even ran a small 5-player game using the 4/8/8/2 setup. It worked very smoothly. I don't understand now why so many people recommend more than 4 (t500) chips for the T500. It's a waste of money.
Essentially, the t500 chips work in tandem with the T1000, and you only need 2-4 of them per Player.

Nice that you found the thread @maxim_666666 .

As stated above, I would bring all the lower denominations on the table and dont waste my time with starting stacks :

If I were to host the tournament with this breakdown, I would completely forgo uniform starting stacks.

I would just give the first player all the T500s and T1ks.

First player 20/60/6/0
and the rest of the player 0/0/10/2

Then let the first player give each player change.

 

[maxim_666666]

Nice that you found the thread @maxim_666666 .

As stated above, I would bring all the lower denominations on the table and dont waste my time with starting stacks :

I'll have to try it.