Cash Game Asking for Breakdown-Advice on 750 Pokerchips (1 Viewer)

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Glaswaage

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Hi everyone,

I am new here and I am hoping you could help me out with advice on how much of each denomination I should buy for my next pokerchipset.
I used to have denomitations of $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100 and since it were a thousand chips (the really cheap ones) it didn't really matter how much of each denomination I had but it was always enough.

Since I want to go for some higher quality chips this time, I have of course to budget and thererfore your suggestions would really be appreciated.

Me and my friends only played cash game with $5/$10 blinds and a thousand chips overall per buy-in.

For the future I would like to play with $10/$20 or $25/$50 blinds and five-thousand chips per buy-in.

On another website it was suggested, that when you have 4 denominations, a distribution of 17,5% to 27,5% to 32,5% to 22,5% from lowest to highest denomination should be chosen.
And with denominations of e.g. $10, $20, $50 and $100 this makes sence to me and I see me and my friends getting along with it just fine.
The amounts would be in this case:
130x $10
200x $20
250x $50
170x $100

BUT HERE IS MY PROBLEM :(
all the chips that I favour on the internet come with denominations of $25, $100, $500 and $1000 (no $10, no $20, no $50) and since the $25 would have to hold up for the small AND the bigblind, I worry that 130x of them just wouldn't be enough :oops:
Besides, I don't see that 170x of $1000 would ever be getting used in one evening.
I was thinking of having just three denominations ($25, $100, $500; maybe 250x each??) but this just sounds kind of lame to me and my people just love to fiddle with low denominations and throwing them in like they are overbetting everyone in this round ;-)

Well yeah that is my problem. Not a big one but please understand, I would really hate to realize to have bought amounts of chips that are never getting used and I would also hate to having to interchange my chips with my neighbours stack all evening long to maintain a playable chipstack.

If anyone of you could give me some feedback of what you are thinking and which distribution of denominations makes sense to you under the given circumstances, I would be really thankful for it and I am already thanking you in advance.

...oh, and why 750 pokerchips overall, you ask?
Well, it has been my experience that we never got to use all of my 1000 chips but when playing with the 500 chips at my buddie's place, chips had been gotten tight every other evenig.


Best rgds and thanks in advance again. I am really looking forward to hearing your opinions.
 
The reason you’re only finding chips with 1/5/25/100/500 etc is that it’s not necessary to have denoms closer together than that.

And I assume you don’t play cash but tourney, otherwise damn!
 
Okay so we need a few clarifications.

1) How many players?

Like what is the most you could see hosting at a time.

2) Tournament or cash?

It sounds like you are describing tournament play unless you have players buying in for $5000 each. On which case, I can't imagine you have too restrictive of a budget.

Let me begin at the beginning, a tournament is where all player buy in for the se about and ate issued the same quantity of chips which can be any number. The game continues until all players but one are eliminated.

A cash game is where chips stand in for actual currency, players can buy in for any amount (within set game limits) and cash out any time for the amount their chips are worth.

Most of the breakdowns you see for tournaments are base T25 (note the symbol T for tournament chips instead of a dollar sign indicating cash) because that's the most popular format, inspired by the "classic" WSOP main event structure. But tournaments can start with any base chip really, structures can be made for T1, T5, T100, T500.

Anyway, if you can clear up how your game works a bit, I can try and come up with better answers.
 
Eriks said:
The reason you’re only finding chips with 1/5/25/100/500 etc is that it’s not necessary to have denoms closer together than that.

And I assume you don’t play cash but tourney, otherwise damn!
Click to expand...
Like I wrote, we were doing just fine with denoms of 10/25/50/100 and I am aware that denoms this close to each other are not recommended but we liked it.
And I can assure you, that we play cash and not tourney. We wouldn't like it, if one of us were to drop out early of the tourney and having to wait until the tourney is over :-/
 
JustinInMN said:
Okay so we need a few clarifications.

1) How many players?

Like what is the most you could see hosting at a time.

2) Tournament or cash?

It sounds like you are describing tournament play unless you have players buying in for $5000 each. On which case, I can't imagine you have too restrictive of a budget.

Let me begin at the beginning, a tournament is where all player buy in for the se about and ate issued the same quantity of chips which can be any number. The game continues until all players but one are eliminated.

A cash game is where chips stand in for actual currency, players can buy in for any amount (within set game limits) and cash out any time for the amount their chips are worth.

Most of the breakdowns you see for tournaments are base T25 (note the symbol T for tournament chips instead of a dollar sign indicating cash) because that's the most popular format, inspired by the "classic" WSOP main event structure. But tournaments can start with any base chip really, structures can be made for T1, T5, T100, T500.

Anyway, if you can clear up how your game works a bit, I can try and come up with better answers.
Click to expand...

1) Between 6 to 9 players. Very seldom 10.

2) Cashgame definately. ThEorEticAlLy* each of us throws 5 bugs in a pot and for that he receives $5000 in chips. The blinds never go up. If you loose all your chips, you can rebuy and continue. Whoever gets tired can count their chips and will get the equivalent in cash from out of the pot. <= Which is basically what you were saying as I just realised. I'm sorry (A cash game is where chips stand in for actual currency, players can buy in for any amount (within set game limits) and cash out any time for the amount their chips are worth.) Yeah, so it's cashgame.

Thank you very much for trying to understand my crooked English.

*Since playing for real money is prohibit in Germany, we of course obey this law and would never throw real Euro-cash into the pot. It is more like an symbolic gesture what we do there :watching:
 
Glaswaage said:
No, no, me and my friends still intend to continue playing cashgame, as we already did in the past.

Are you saying that $25, $100, $500, $1000 is just not the right denomination for playing cashgame?
Click to expand...

Hold on, how much real money are you wagering? Tens of thousands of dollars?
 
Do I understand correctly that to avoid breaking the law, instead of having a 1€ chip (or a $1 chip) representing 1 euro, you use a $1000 chip? So $1000 in chips is worth 1€?

I know nothing of German law, but I would be surprised if this makes any difference in the eyes if the law.

Why not just have 1=1?
 
Glaswaage said:
Me and my friends only played cash game with $5/$10 blinds and a thousand chips overall per buy-in.

For the future I would like to play with $10/$20 or $25/$50 blinds and five-thousand chips per buy-in.
Click to expand...
You are playing cash blind of 5/10 up to 25/50 ?
That would be a fixed limit buy in of $400 minimum on a 10/20 game
No-limit buy in of $5,000 on a 25/50 game
Are you really playing that high?
 
Glaswaage said:
Like I wrote, we were doing just fine with denoms of 10/25/50/100 and I am aware that denoms this close to each other are not recommended but we liked it.
And I can assure you, that we play cash and not tourney. We wouldn't like it, if one of us were to drop out early of the tourney and having to wait until the tourney is over :-/
Click to expand...

cool! In that case I would just get a bunch of cpc customs; great quality clays with your own choice of denoms/color and spots/inlays
 
Eriks said:
The reason you’re only finding chips with 1/5/25/100/500 etc is that it’s not necessary to have denoms closer together than that.

And I assume you don’t play cash but tourney, otherwise damn!
Click to expand...
Glaswaage said:
Like I wrote, we were doing just fine with denoms of 10/25/50/100 and I am aware that denoms this close to each other are not recommended but we liked it.
And I can assure you, that we play cash and not tourney. We wouldn't like it, if one of us were to drop out early of the tourney and having to wait until the tourney is over :-/
Click to expand...
And what I forgot to say:
Yes it is cashgame. We like denoms in ranges that are close to each other. For these denoms I have a distribution that works all evening. But regarding the chips that I think of buying (the ones that I like on the internet), they have all these huge denom-gaps between each other (25/100/500/1000) so that I am now trying to find out what distribution could be chosen because I have no experience with such denoms.
 
So, it's a NLHE modified tournament game where the blinds never go up and there are unlimited rebuys. News to me, but we'll go forward with it.

Do not bother with the "in between" values like 10, 50. You will end up with many unnecessary chips, so why spend the money on what you don't need?
A basic 10 player structure can be done with about 300 chips. Rebuys can happen with only the largest denomination chips. Since you like to start with T5000, might I suggest the following breakdown:

12x T25, 12x T100, 5x T500, 1x T1000, that's 30 chips per player starting stack. x10 players gives 300 chips.
You can an option of how you do your rebuys, but usually it's 5x T1000 and make change as your play.
Or, if you really want more chips around, first rebuy done with 8x T25, 8x T100, 4x T500, 2xT1000. x10 rebuys gives another 220 chips. Fill up the rest with T1000 chips to do all rebuys after the first 10.

So, final breakdown (after rounding to 600 chips)
200x T25
200x T100
100x T500
100 xT1000
which gives you 10 starting stacks of T5000 and 25 full rebuys throughout the night. Would that be enough for your game?
 
Jambine said:
You are playing cash blind of 5/10 up to 25/50 ?
That would be a fixed limit buy in of $400 minimum on a 10/20 game
No-limit buy in of $5,000 on a 25/50 game
Are you really playing that high?
Click to expand...
No, no raising of blinds. I would play cashgame with blinds 10/20 if I would manage to find chips that have these denoms and that I like.
But since all the chips I like do not have such denoms, I am assuming I will have to play with blinds 25/50 in the future.

Of course not that high :) The 5000 is just what you get in chips and is supposed to stand for what everyone has given into the pot. Really small amounts of EUR if we were to play for real cash at all :watching:

Am I assuming right, that my use of the $-symbol has led to some confusion about what amounts of money we play?
If so, I really apologize.
 
Mr Winberg said:
Do I understand correctly that to avoid breaking the law, instead of having a 1€ chip (or a $1 chip) representing 1 euro, you use a $1000 chip? So $1000 in chips is worth 1€?

I know nothing of German law, but I would be surprised if this makes any difference in the eyes if the law.

Why not just have 1=1?
Click to expand...
If the police were to show up, you would better not admit that any real money is involved in any way. When somebody asks, you play just for the fun and the used pokerchips do NOT have any kind of equivalent-value in cash/EUR or whatsoever!
 
Glaswaage said:
I apologize but I don't understand.
Maybe it's my "dilemma" then?
Click to expand...
As was mentioned above, the problem is not that you can't find $10, $20 and $50 chips... The problem is that you think you need to...

Your players may be used to using denoms that are close together, but it won't take them long to get used to more standardized denoms. As an additional benefit, you can buy stock sets and also run the same game with fewer chips (which cost less).

JMHO.

Glaswaage said:
Thank you very much for trying to understand my crooked English.
Click to expand...
I'm always amazed when people wriye this... If I went on a German or French site, I couldn't post anything that would resemble a coherent thought
 
Glaswaage said:
Cashgame definately. ThEorEticAlLy* each of us throws 5 bugs in a pot and for that he receives $5000 in chips
Click to expand...

Got it so cash game and you are using 1000:1 conversion.

Okay so yeah 10, 20, 50 are not super common in stock chips, so if you really need these denoms you probably need to get customs.

That said would setting both blinds the same at 25-25 be a feasible option (and maybe a step toward pushing the group toward 25-50?)

Then you would be doing something like

12*25
32*100
3*500
For 5000 in chips

So to cover 8 players

100*25
300*100
100*500

You have some flexibility if the game gets crowded too.

If 10-20 really are you stakes and you can get find a set with tens, I would suggest. Just getting 10-50-100 chips if still doing 1000:1.

8 stacks of 10/6/26/4

100*10
50*50
250*100
100*500

There are ways to this for just 500-600 chips

Also does your conversion have to be 1000:1, could the game be changed to do 100:1?
 
@Glaswaage if you were really playing 25/50 EUROS cash, it would mean you owned most of Porsche company's shares, in which case I would have already given you my most of my money :D
 
Best solution for your game is to select four denominations -- each at 4x to 5x apart -- and get a 600-chip set with the following breakdown: 150/200/200/50. This is plenty of chips for your group of 6-9 players (provided you adhere to the 4x/5x rule).

Makes no difference whether the actual denominations are .25-1-5-25, or .50-2-10-50, or 1-5-25-100, or 5-25-100-500, as they will all play exactly the same. Just pick whichever grouping of chips that most closely matches your actual monetary stakes.

I have no idea what "5 bugs in a pot" is worth.
 
Last edited:
Glaswaage said:
Of course not that high :) The 5000 is just what you get in chips and is supposed to stand for what everyone has given into the pot. Really small amounts of EUR if we were to play for real cash at all :watching:
Click to expand...
OK. I think you are making this much too complicated.
Tell us your typical buy in amount (in real money) how much does each player put into the game?
 
The whole 1€ = .01€ thing is good when you’re making do with the chips you have, and I’ve certainly done that...but if you’re getting new chips why not get denoms in line with the stakes you play?
 
My advice, since I'm in the German realm as well and it's always the same problem. If you're playing those couple of cents Cashgames. You can get personalized Ceramic chips on suplaya.de quite durable and the pricing isn't to bad.
If you want to continue playing with 10s and 20s you should probably just do that. I personally like getting most of my chips in the second lowest denomination.
When buying from other people you be buying barrels or racks so in 20x or 100x
So if you'd want to sell your chips at some point you should probably go with amounts that can be deducted into racks and barrels.

For example. For our cashgame I've got the Jack Detroit chips (freaking expensive) and that is
1rack of 1s
3 racks of 5s
6 barrels of 25s and
7 barrels of 100s
We're playing 1/2 or 2/5 and usually don't have problems with the amount of chips.
I just personally like having stacks of chips in front of me and that's why I have more of the small chips.
So if you want a practical set with as little chips as possible you should do as advised above. As that would be the correct plan.
Otherwise it's not bad to get the chips that are a little cheaper but you can get loads of for a great feeling playing.


Regarding the law.
You can play for money within Germany. It's not illegal!
When you are playing with solely your friends, not regularly and without rake. If that's the given the amounts don't matter. It can be 500/1000 actuall cashgame as long as there is no rake there is pretty much no problem.
Problem is to prove, that you are actually all friends and that you don't play regularly, but that's another story.

Greetings Jack
 

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