Cash Game Breakdown for versatile chip set (1 Viewer)

[Nex]

I'm currently finalizing chip breakdowns for my first versatile "quality" chip set I want to use for all my home games for a long time, and I'm looking for your comments.

They're going to be Nile Club ceramics, which are available in 25¢/50¢/$1/$2/$2.50/$3/$5/$10/$25/$100/$500/$1000:

The decision on the chips is final, so please don't propose that I get a different type of chips. One day, when I got my poker bankroll fully set and a good amount of spare money on top of it, I might consider getting high quality custom clay chips – but that's far in the future and even then, those are so expensive for me (add int'l shipping and +19% from customs) that I likely won't buy remotely as many of them that I can fully replace this chip set here.


So I am planning to buy two 1000ct birdcages in total, each of which shall be optimized to cover 2 full tables / 20 players for a given set of blinds by itself.

In addition to those, there will be another 600ct pack which will cover swap chips and also some replacement chips for each denom. (Since I live in Germany and can only get Nile Clubs by purchasing internationally with quite expensive shipping and a MOQ of 100, I need to have some "buffer" chips ready for when one breaks.)

The limits I am planning to play are 25¢/25¢, 25¢/50¢ and 50¢/$1 (birdcage one), and $1/$2 and $2/$4 (birdcage two).

The poker variants played will be no-limit and fixed-limit Hold'em, and also pot-limit (hi) and fixed-limit (hi/lo, maybe also hi) Omaha.

For all non-fixed-limit games, the minimum and maximum buyins are going to be 40 BB – 100 BB. For those there will also be a maximum number of three rebuys per player and per session, however I am not by far planning with handling the possible max for every single player. Maybe I also reduce the max rebuys to two.

I've been going through many iterations of pondering and calculating, and currently my breakdowns are as follows:

Low blinds birdcage

• 25¢ x 250 (400)
  
• $1 x 400 (325)
  
• $5 x 200 (175)
  
• $10 x 50
• $25 x 100 (50)

You might be curious about why I included $10 chips. I want to keep those because for one I really like the design of them (also want the game to be a little more colorful than just 4 denoms), and for the other they are a little bit more efficient for some buy-in/rebuy amounts. If I didn't include $10's, I'd probably just bump the count of $5's to 250.

For the times when I do 25c/25c games with players favoring low-ish bets and raises, I will likely swap 50x$25 (remain 50), 75x$1 (remain 325) and 25x$5 (remain 175) out of the case for 150 more 25¢'s (bringing their total count up to 400), which would be just enough to give every single player a full barrel of them.

Sample chip stacks per person:

25¢/25¢ – $10-$25 buy-in
$10 buy-in: 12x25¢, 7x$1 (19 chips) — rebuy: 1x$10
$25 buy-in: 12x25¢, 7x$1, 3x$5 (22 Chips) — rebuy: 1x$25
(possibly upping to 20x25¢)

25¢/50¢ – $20-$50 buy-in
$20 buy-in: 12x25¢, 7x$1, 2x$5 (21 Chips) — rebuy: 2x$10
$50 buy-in: 12x25¢, 7x$1, 4x$5, 2x$10 (25 Chips) — rebuy: 2x$25
(switching to $5's after I run out of $10's)

50¢/$1 – $40-$100 buy-in
$40 buy-in: 8x25¢, 13x$1, 5x$5 (26 Chips) — rebuy: 1x$25, 1x$10, 1x$5 or 4x$10
$100 buy-in: 8x25¢, 8x$1, 4x$5, 2x$10, 2x$25 (25 Chips) — rebuy: 4x$25


High blinds birdcage

• $1 x 200
• $5 x 400
• $25 x 200
• $100 x 150 (175)
  
• $500 x 25 (20)
  
• $1000 x 25 (5)

There would be a serious shortage of $100's in the very unlikely/rare case that I have two full tables of players with all making use of the maximum number of re-buys (which would require 280 $100 chips). But when all the $100's have been used up for re-buys, there's already a lot of money on the table and likely significantly more than $500 in the stacks of a few players, I'd then make change with my $500's to get some $100's back to fulfill the re-buys.

You might argue that I won't need $1000's, or even if not, by far not as many. Thing is, I can only buy chips of one denom in increments of 25, and I do want to have at least a few $1000's ready just in case. I will however get some extra $500's in the 600ct pack, so I will be able to swap some $1000's in the set out for more $500's, either going for a 40/10 split, or with a 20/5 split and adding 25 more $100's.

Sample chip stacks per person:

$1/$2 – $80-$200 buy-in
$80 buy-in: 10x$1, 14x$5 (24 Chips) — rebuy: 3x$25, 1x$5
$200 buy-in: 10x$1, 13x$5, 5x$25 (28 Chips) — rebuy: 2x$100

$2/$4 – $160-$400 buy-in
$160 buy-in: 10x$1, 10x$5, 4x$25 (24 Chips) — rebuy: 1x$100, 2x$25, 2x$5
$400 buy-in: 10x$1, 13x$5, 5x$25, 2x$100 (30 Chips) — rebuy: 4x$100
(by the time I run out of $100's for re-buys, people will be able to give change for a $500 chip from the bank)

 

[BGinGA]

The decision on the chips is final, so please don't propose that I get a different type of chips.

Okay, but you can get higher quality chips for less money. Nile Clubs are the bottom feeders of the ceramic world, prone to spinners (chips not flat) and easy breakage (poor materials quality).

 

[Nex]

Okay, but you can get higher quality chips for less money. Nile Clubs are the bottom feeders of the ceramic world, prone to spinners (chips not flat) and easy breakage (poor materials quality).

I've heard of them being prone to breaking, but I will make damn sure that the type of people who are going to touch them will not put any unneccessary stress on them (throwing around etc).

Basically I only have a very limited choice for higher-quality (i.e. anything better than cheap plastic with metal insert) chips right now where the additional costs for int'l purchase are reasonably low, namely what I can get via the global shipping program on eBay: Scroll and Nile Club for ceramics, and Milano for china clays (which I already don't like because of the sticker label that can peel off – if I were to go for clays it'll be those with real inlays).

I have sample sets of both ceramics, and the Scrolls are (imo) of a much lower quality than the Nile Clubs, also I like their silky flat feel much more. The Nile Club samples I have sure aren't completely flat and there is one spinner in my sample set, but they are fully acceptable for me in that regard.

In Germany there's unfortunately only two stores which offer higher-quality chips, and a) they only carry ceramics – mostly only Sun-Fly – in designs I don't like, and b) the price per chip they are asking for is ridiculous – in fact it's still much cheaper for me to import Nile Club or Scrolls by myself and paying for int'l shipping and customs. All the other (international) poker chip shops I found so far quote ridiculous shipping fees because the only thing they offer is UPS or USPS via air, anything from $100 to $200 for just a single 1000ct birdcage.

Which chips would be the ones you were referring to? And where are they sold?

 

[Trihonda]

Responding On my phone.

Money and value seem important, so ditch the souvenir $10 and $1k chips. Worthless.

Also it's unclear whether you're purchasing duplicate denom chips for the high and low
Sets. If so, this seems silly. Just purchase one set that spreads all the games you want.

 

[Nex]

Money and value seem important, so ditch the souvenir $10 and $1k chips. Worthless.

Well they are being used, but yes I get your point. For the $1000's in particular their use value is somewhat low compared to the other denoms, but the $10's do still have reasonable value. In the low blinds set I see no other smart replacement for the $10's other than getting more $5's – and the bottleneck where the $10's would be used is exactly when I run low on $5's to cover amounts up to just below $25. With the 50 $10 chips I essentially can cover double the amount of what I can cover with 50 $5's there.

Money and value are indeed important to me, but not that much that I'd have to minmax like a madman and cut out every single "needless" chip. Not for chips in this price range. I can afford the 2600 chips I'm aiming for

The biggest problem I have with the money aspect are ridiculous shipping charges (fun fact: our customs will add the shipping costs to the product value to calculate tax) for expensive air delivery when shipping on an actual ship would be much cheaper (that's also what eBay's GSP does and why it's so cheap, afaik).

I am able to afford and willing to get this little bunch of extra chips – for chips of this quality and price at least – just for the "souvenir" or "more colorful table" point (75 chips is less than 3% of a 2600ct order).

Also it's unclear whether you're purchasing duplicate denom chips for the high and low
Sets. If so, this seems silly. Just purchase one set that spreads all the games you want.

This is actually a deliberate choice. I am aware there would be lots of doubled chips if I were to only ever use one of the 1000ct sets at a time, but I'd like to keep the flexibility the way I chose gives me.

 

[BGinGA]

I'm looking for your comments.

I don't think this is really true, so I'm just gonna wish you luck and bow out. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Nex]

I don't think this is really true, so I'm just gonna wish you luck and bow out. Welcome to the forum.

Well I was more looking for comments regarding the chip denom breakdown itself, not e.g. the type of chips I want to use. I merely posted the type of chips so you know what denoms I can pick from.

But still:

Which chips would be the ones you were referring to? And where are they sold?

And sure, as I already wrote I've already done a lot of refinement on it, meaning there will probably only be very little room for more optimization within the given frame. But it's always possible that someone finds an important aspect I didn't think of when calculating the breakdown, so I thought putting it up for discussion couldn't hurt.

Even in the case it's good as it is, there might be other people who are looking for sample breakdowns for chip sets of just this size and for games with the same blinds so they could take mine for inspiration or as a starting point, in addition to all the others that are already out there

Anyway thanks for your input and the welcome!

 

[Gunnar]

Well they are being used, but yes I get your point. For the $1000's in particular their use value is somewhat low compared to the other denoms, but the $10's do still have reasonable value. In the low blinds set I see no other smart replacement for the $10's other than getting more $5's – and the bottleneck where the $10's would be used is exactly when I run low on $5's to cover amounts up to just below $25. With the 50 $10 chips I essentially can cover double the amount of what I can cover with 50 $5's there.

Money and value are indeed important to me, but not that much that I'd have to minmax like a madman and cut out every single "needless" chip. Not for chips in this price range. I can afford the 2600 chips I'm aiming for

The biggest problem I have with the money aspect are ridiculous shipping charges (fun fact: our customs will add the shipping costs to the product value to calculate tax) for expensive air delivery when shipping on an actual ship would be much cheaper (that's also what eBay's GSP does and why it's so cheap, afaik).

I am able to afford and willing to get this little bunch of extra chips – for chips of this quality and price at least – just for the "souvenir" or "more colorful table" point (75 chips is less than 3% of a 2600ct order).



This is actually a deliberate choice. I am aware there would be lots of doubled chips if I were to only ever use one of the 1000ct sets at a time, but I'd like to keep the flexibility the way I chose gives me.

Dude I live in an Island in middle of nowhere where the tax is 24%

Anyway welcome to the forum and I would think about the 10's more 5's are more fun.

 

[Craig D]

The limits I am planning to play are 25¢/25¢, 25¢/50¢ and 50¢/$1 (birdcage one), and $1/$2 and $2/$4 (birdcage two).

The poker variants played will be no-limit and fixed-limit Hold'em, and also pot-limit (hi) and fixed-limit (hi/lo, maybe also hi) Omaha.

For all non-fixed-limit games, the minimum and maximum buyins are going to be 40 BB – 100 BB. For those there will also be a maximum number of three rebuys per player and per session, however I am not by far planning with handling the possible max for every single player. Maybe I also reduce the max rebuys to two.

Looks like your getting 2600 chips cool...

2600 chip is a great amount of chips for 20 players, however a limit breakdown is vastly differs from a no limit / pot limit breakdown

Try to figure out your bank size

What the most amount of money you will honestly have in play?

$2-4 Blinds 100BB deep 3 rebuys for 20 players needs a $32000 Bank

Think hard... You say money is important to you, do you really want to risk losing money by using easily obtainable non unique chip?

Can you get by with 12x25c chips a player? you can get more useful $1s

Do you really need a $25 chip? without it you can get more useful $1s

I can see this ending badly

Have Fun

 

[Trihonda]

I don't think this is really true, so I'm just gonna wish you luck and bow out. Welcome to the forum.

Was my thought exactly

 

[buffalosldr]

I'm going to repeat that the $10's and $1000's are useless. I also would not consider hosting a cash game that requires 100's, maybe even 25's with cheap chips. Security and piece of mind.

I only have venerati ceramics and even though I know my players would bump up the limit, I decline until I can get a custom cash set. We stick to .25/.50 and occasionally 1/2 with lots of ones and fives.

 

[Nex]

2600 chip is a great amount of chips for 20 players, however a limit breakdown is vastly differs from a no limit / pot limit breakdown

Just to clarify, there'll be one 1000ct set for (up to) 2 tables of low blinds, and one 1000ct set for (up to) 2 tables of higher blinds. The remaining 600 are away from the action, they consist of stand-by replacement chips and some more to swap a few chips in the birdcages before the game commences.

Try to figure out your bank size

What the most amount of money you will honestly have in play?

$2-4 Blinds 100BB deep 3 rebuys for 20 players needs a $32000 Bank

Thank you for reminding me of this. I think I did consider this at an early stage of drafting the breakdown, but back then thought it might not be worth calculating/checking this at every single draft update. I guess at this stage it might be worth doing it another time.

Think hard... You say money is important to you, do you really want to risk losing money by using easily obtainable non unique chip?

Valid point. Eventually I also want to get a custom chip set, particularly for the higher stakes.
For now though, non-custom chips in this price range will have to suffice.

But generally I see it like this: There will never be perfect security anywhere – be it here, be it software protection, you name it. No matter how high you build the walls, there'll always be a way to overcome them – the only factor that changes is the amount of energy and dedication one would have to spend. I'm merely aiming to make the walls just high enough so people get deterred already by seeing that the ratio between the energy/time/money they'd have to spend and the potential payoff is just too bad to be worth trying.

While the chips are easily obtainable in the US and probably also where you live, in Germany there is not a single business that imports specifically those chips, so anyone who would want to pull this off would have to import them by themselves. This means that for a roll of 25 chips, they'd already pay something around 30-35 bucks including shipping, and 25 chips is already quite a lot for the intended use I'd say – it'd take them many sessions to smuggle all of them in, and there always is a high chance that they get busted well before they managed to get rid of all those chips.

• Smuggling in denoms higher than $5 should be virtually impossible to go unnoticed the very second they do it, just because it is already such a significant amount seen in relation to player's buy-ins; even 5$ should already be borderline for 50¢/$1 games and lower. And $1 chips and lower will already cost them more to purchase than they are worth in my game (provided they only buy a single roll of 25 chips – but then again it will only pay off if they manage to smuggle ALL of them in)
  
• Smuggling in multiple chips per session massively raises the chance of being detected. If this happens, the bad guy of course is banned for life from my games, but in addition his stack gets confiscated to pay out everyone who was betrayed by that person in past games as much as the confiscated amount allows for – which also means any chips they still have left over become worthless because they have no more opportunities to smuggle them in in future games. Now if they only ever buy in with the minimum to avoid a huge loss in case of detection, it'll also become extremely hard to smuggle in $5 and higher denom chips. On the other hand, if they buy in with more money to conceal the additional chip(s) better, they will lose the whole big stack if detected. So no matter which route they try, the problem for them stays the same.
  
• Smuggling in even just a single chip will always be detected before the bad guy leaves the place (or when he's about to), as one of my rules is that whenever someone cashes out their chips, all chips in circulation have to be counted for completeness. (This is also to deter people from pocketing 25¢ chips, which cost more than the value printed on them, e.g. as keepsake). When it turns out there are more chips in play than originally given out, an attempt is made by all players present to identify the source of the foreign chip(s). If after all the source can't be determined, the money value of the surplus chip(s) is split up equally among all present players (including the person currently cashing out) and taken from their stacks (remainder amounts smaller than the smallest-denom chip available is paid in cash). This lowers the winnings of the bad guy if he stays undetected, albeit of course not much.

Abovementioned procedures are already fully formulated and part of my home game rules document I've drafted. This document will be available to all players at any time (as a booklet on the poker table, and on my NAS to view before they even come over), which means perfect transparency. They play at my place – they agree with my rules.
I do agree people would likely still be disgruntled in the case someone successfully sneaks in a $5 chip (meaning a loss of 50 cents at 10 players), but probably by far not as much as if they were if I wouldn't have those preformulated rules around.

This of course is only theory so far, of which however I strongly believe it will work out well enough. If you see some flaws in it, particularly if you have made your own experiences with people smuggling in chips already, please tell me!

Can you get by with 12x25c chips a player? you can get more useful $1s

Well, any way you shift the chips around, there'll always be the need to make change at some point during a game. Question is, with which configuration will I minimize the number of occasions?

Sure I can easily get by with 12x 25¢'s for the 25¢/50¢ and higher games. For 25¢/25¢ however I think I need more per player. Do you have a different opinion on that, and if yes, can you elaborate why?

Just to clarify: the default breakdown for my low stakes set would contain 250x25¢ and 400x$1. I plan to get 150 more 25¢'s in the 600ct extra/swap pack and only put them into the actual play set (the 1000ct birdcage) when we decide we want to play 25¢/25¢ only. So for 25¢/50¢ and higher, there'll be 400 $1's and less 25¢'s.

Or do you think 400 $1's (= 20 chips per player) are not enough for 25¢/50¢ and 50¢/$1?
After all there's still $5's around, so if players compose their bets ideally, there should never be a reason to use more than 4/5 $1's per bet? (Correct me if I'm wrong please)
I expect every player to be mindful of what chip denoms they use to compose their bets. After all I'm no casino which can (or wants to) afford massive amounts of chips of every denom just so that one brainless player at the table can keep paying his $10+ bets in all $1's.

Do you really need a $25 chip? without it you can get more useful $1s

I guess you are talking about the low stakes set here?

For that one, I think the $25 chip is a really nice space saver and perfect for re-buys on these levels (25¢/25¢: 1x$25=100BB, 25¢/50¢: 2x$25=100BB) and pretty much required at re-buys for 50¢/$1 games – having merely $5's available to do $100 rebuys would require a significantly larger amount of $5 chips, bursting the 1000 chip limit per birdcage. Even much more when you allow multiple rebuys.

In fact, for 50¢/$1 games I might even reduce the number of 25¢'s in the set further (aiming towards 8 chips per player) and instead swapping in like 25 $100's and a few more $25's.

In general, I am aiming to only give out small denoms at the initial buy-in and any re-buy to be done with as few chips as possible.

My reasoning: The amount of players at the table doesn't change – if you imagine you'd take all the chips on the table after a re-buy with high-denom chips and then re-distribute them evenly among all players, each player would still have an acceptable number of small-denom chips in front of them. Also when a player has to re-buy, it means that their earlier stack is now in possession some other players in addition to what they brought (= there should always be at least one player who has enough money in front of them to give smaller change for high-denom chips).

This might of course have a logic flaw or some aspect I didn't think of in it, so if you have a different view on it, please elaborate!

I'm going to repeat that the $10's and $1000's are useless.

For the $10's, I again made some calculations, and I can't see how replacing them with other chips, particularly of lower denominations, would ameliorate or solve the bottleneck that's already in there – replacing with $5's would make it a bit worse, and replacing with others would make it significantly worse.

Remember that the set should have enough room to handle up to 3 re-buys for each of the 20 players. If we're playing at 25¢/50¢, if you take a look at the sample buy-ins and re-buys, you'll see the initial buy-in from each player will already take up to 8 $5's each (160/200 chips) provided I ditch the $10's. Now with re-buys, I have to reserve up to 4 $5 chips more per re-buy and player, so at 3 re-buys and the target amount of 20 covered players, this would bump up the amount of required $5's to 400. Since I only have 50 $10's in the set I would have to take 150 more chips of other denoms out of the set to get those additionally required $5's in:

• For the 25¢ chip I'm already at the bottom limit since I don't want to reduce the 12 25¢ chips per player further (would require making change too often imo).
• For the $1 chip, I could in theory free up to 125 chips (leaving 275) if I keep the buy-ins strictly to the samples, but I guess it's better to have more of them in reserve and maybe giving out a single $5 in $1's instead per player when playing with low stacks.
• For the $25 chip, I'd already have a bottleneck on those when playing at 50¢/$1 and people are buying and re-buying for the $100 maximum. To cover this extreme case, I would need 280 $25's. Might even warrant changing this to 75x$25 and 25x$100 to ease it up a bit, which however still leaves a (smaller) bottleneck.

For the $1000's in the high stakes birdcage, what denom would you replace them with? $100's?

I also would not consider hosting a cash game that requires 100's, maybe even 25's with cheap chips. Security and piece of mind.

I only have venerati ceramics and even though I know my players would bump up the limit, I decline until I can get a custom cash set. We stick to .25/.50 and occasionally 1/2 with lots of ones and fives.

Definitely a valid point.

I've elaborated on this issue above in reply to Craig D already a bit, but yes, my theories there of course will hit a point where they'll no longer work out that well when the starting stacks are getting big enough, which is definitely going to happen in $1/$2 and bigger games.

So yeah, I might hold off purchasing the high blinds birdcage for now and stick to the 25¢/25¢, 25¢/50¢ and 50¢/$1 one and maybe get a custom set some time later for $1/$2 and up.

After all, we would predominantly play NLHE and PLO at low blinds only and somewhat rarely (and only) fixed-limit games at higher blinds for starters. For fixed-limit games only, I could imagine the amount of higher-denom chips in that birdcage could even be sufficient for $1/$2 or $2/$4. Will need to calculate that through. (For fixed limit I was planning to have a maximum buy-in/rebuy of 20BB, but an unlimited amount of re-buys as long as the bank can manage)

 

[upNdown]

The people giving you advice have ton of practical experience. Ignore them if you want, but I promise you, you don't need $10's! If you want them because you think they're cool, fine.

 

[Sharpie26]

If you're interested, I have 120 Nile Club chips that I don't use. 40 $.25s, 40 $.50s and 40 $1s. I bought them because I really liked the colors and designs but I realized that ceramics just aren't my bag. With the potential that these chips have for chipping and/or breakage it would be nice to have some extras. I'd be willing to sell them fairly cheap. Just let me know.

 

[AWenger]

Your total chip count and distribution should be based on the number of players, stakes, and number of rebuys expected for the group as a whole. In my experience, not everyone buys in the for the max, either. Have lots of the workhorse chip. For no-limit, the chip that is needed to make raises in the range of 3x to 7x the big blind, $1 or $5, and have the fewest of the chip that is used for the small blind -- even just 8 or 10 small blind chips per player (20 players) should be enough for no-limit games.

As far as the stakes and the blinds go, a no-limit game of 0.25/0.50 has similar 'bank' and betting requirements as a limit game of $1/$2. So unless you plan to use a lot of quarters in 0.25/0.50 limit games, I'd recommend getting less 0.25s and more $1s and $5s.

Unlike others, I'm not necessarily opposed to the $10 chip, especially if your players are used to it. (The $10 denom is not common in the USA, as casinos typically use $1, $5, $25, $100) . But I'd probably just use the $10 as a bigger denom chip in a low limit game. -- i.e. use: $0.25, $1, and $10s, and you can skip the $5s in that game. But for a $1/$2 NL game, go with $1, $5, and $25s, and skip the $10s. If you do get $10s, get a full rack, they'll be easier to count and keep track of in full racks.

For all non-fixed-limit games, the minimum and maximum buyins are going to be 40 BB – 100 BB

Perfectly acceptable. And I prefer this cap for my home games, opposed to an unlimited or 'buy up to the big stack', although those games can be fun, with the right players.

For those there will also be a maximum number of three rebuys per player and per session, however I am not by far planning with handling the possible max for every single player. Maybe I also reduce the max rebuys to two.

Why?? What is your reason and intent behind this? If your intent is to keep the game friendly and limit people's/friends' losses, which I can totally understand, then just play lower stakes that everybody's comfortable with, like 0.25/0.50 blinds for NL, or $2/$4 for limit. If you get a different mix of players and have enough for 2 tables, just have one lower stakes table, and one higher stakes table.

[I've played in some NL games, where I just got super unlucky for the first 3 or 4 or 5 buy-ins, and managed to make a comeback -- the 5th time is the charm I'm just imagining that I'm a player that was all-in with the best hand three different times, ended up getting stacked all three times (it happens!), and then the host tells me I can't rebuy and I need to leave the game -- I'd probably punch him, and I'm not a violent person at all.]

I also would not consider hosting a cash game that requires 100's, maybe even 25's with cheap chips. Security and piece of mind.

I will second this. If you are playing with friends, or friends of friends, playing for $$ can make people do stupid things. I've heard at least one story of a cheater at a home game that brought in look alike chips, then cashed out with them. Just be aware.

 

[Nex]

You've obviously put a lot of thought into all this. I wonder how much practical experience you have. The people giving you advice have ton of practical experience. Ignore them if you want, but I promise you, YOU DON'T NEED $10's! If you want them because you think they're cool, fine, say that. But you don't need them. If you're using .50's, and 2.50's, then a $10 would fit in nicely before the $50. But in a game with $1's and $5's, $10's are a wasted superfluous chip.

Yes, I did put in a lot of thought, and nope, I don't have any practical experience yet.

I also do assume that at least a few of the posters here have more experience – however the only thing they've done so far is suggesting a change, but they did not yet detail how exactly this will ameliorate any of the flaws my breakdowns have.

Regarding the $10, I elaborated on this issue in my previous wall of text. Given the constraints described, how would you replace the $10's (or further modify the breakdown) to still make sure the 1000ct birdcage can handle buyin + 3 rebuys for 20 players at least as good as with the $10's, if not better, at the given 3 blind levels?

I did take the suggestion to replace them and tried out various alternate options. All of them turned out to cover re-buys slightly or even much worse than with $10's. But maybe I missed an alternate option that was actually better? Some commenters here might sure have more experience and have a valid point, but even with that I will not blindly trust them – I want to understand why exactly the suggestion makes the breakdown better and reassure myself that all other constraints are still roughly met. Remember the cap of 1000 chips in that birdcage, and remember the rebuys.

Btw. I actually did mention I want the $10's in it also because I like their design, but that's not the point I wanted to make

If you're interested, I have 120 Nile Club chips that I don't use. 40 $.25s, 40 $.50s and 40 $1s. I bought them because I really liked the colors and designs but I realized that ceramics just aren't my bag. With the potential that these chips have for chipping and/or breakage it would be nice to have some extras. I'd be willing to sell them fairly cheap. Just let me know.

Thanks for the offer, but I think even if you sell the chips themselves very cheap it'll cost so much to ship them in a regular way (USPS/UPS air mail) in relation to the number of chips that it'll likely end up being a worse deal for me than just purchasing a bigger set on eBay where I get fairly cheap (~$15) GSP shipping.

 

[Craig D]

Just to clarify: the default breakdown for my low stakes set would contain 250x25¢ and 400x$1

This is fine for Pot / No Limit, but it is never OK for Limit 60-200 workhorse chips are needed per player

I guess you are talking about the low stakes set here?

For that one, I think the $25 chip is a really nice space saver

No $25s are no needed for any of your games

I think big games run better with 3 denominations, adding a 4th or 5th denomination if you have to eg 25c $1 $5 and $100s and higher if needed (My game uses 10c 50c $1chips with $20 plaques)

For the $10's, I again made some calculations, and I can't see how replacing them with other chips

If you like the $10s get them

In the small games use 25c $1 and $10 chips, it will work if you issue lots of $1s, I jump from $1s to $20s (never use $5s and $10s at the same table)

Have Fun

 

[AWenger]

Here's a breakdown I'd recommend, for 2600 chips, especially for NL games where the $5 is the workhorse. If your games are centered more towards low limit, (assuming you can even find 20 players who want to play $1/$2 or $2/4 limit) then you may need more $1s.

/ QTY DENOM BANK
/ ------------------
/ 200 $0.25 $ 50
/ 800 $1 $ 800
/ 1000 $5 $ 5,000
/ 100 $10 $ 1,000
/ 400 $25 $10,000
/ 100 $100 $10,000
/ -------------------
/ TOTAL BANK $26,850

Edit:
Birdcage 1 (1000) 200 $0.25 + 600 $1 + 100 $10 + 100 $25
Birdcage 2 (1000) 200 $1 + 600 $5 + 200 $25
remaining: (600) 400 $5 + 100 $25 + 100 $100

 

[Nex]

AWenger, for starters, thank you! So far your post seems to be the most useful one to me.

Your total chip count and distribution should be based on the number of players, stakes, and number of rebuys expected for the group as a whole. In my experience, not everyone buys in the for the max, either. Have lots of the workhorse chip. For no-limit, the chip that is needed to make raises in the range of 3x to 7x the big blind, $1 or $5, and have the fewest of the chip that is used for the small blind -- even just 8 or 10 small blind chips per player (20 players) should be enough for no-limit games.

Remember that I also want to be able to host 25¢/25¢ games, so I will need – at least sitting on standby in the 600ct pack – a few more 25¢'s for that mode. If I play 25¢/50¢ or 50¢/$1, a lot of the 25¢'s of course can be swapped out for a different denom.

As far as the stakes and the blinds go, a no-limit game of 0.25/0.50 has similar 'bank' and betting requirements as a limit game of $1/$2. So unless you plan to use a lot of quarters in 0.25/0.50 limit games, I'd recommend getting less 0.25s and more $1s and $5s.

OK, so even more $1's than the 400 that are in it currently? Or then rather more $5's (currently 200 inside)?

Unlike others, I'm not necessarily opposed to the $10 chip, especially if your players are used to it. (The $10 denom is not common in the USA, as casinos typically use $1, $5, $25, $100) . But I'd probably just use the $10 as a bigger denom chip in a low limit game. -- i.e. use: $0.25, $1, and $10s, and you can skip the $5s in that game. But for a $1/$2 NL game, go with $1, $5, and $25s, and skip the $10s. If you do get $10s, get a full rack, they'll be easier to count and keep track of in full racks.

I agree that it adds complexity. The main reason why I put them on the list are to ameliorate the massive shortage on $5's I would have with handling the target amount of re-buys at least a bit.

For those there will also be a maximum number of three rebuys per player and per session, however I am not by far planning with handling the possible max for every single player. Maybe I also reduce the max rebuys to two.

Why?? What is your reason and intent behind this? If your intent is to keep the game friendly and limit people's/friends' losses, which I can totally understand, then just play lower stakes that everybody's comfortable with, like 0.25/0.50 blinds for NL, or $2/$4 for limit. If you get a different mix of players and have enough for 2 tables, just have one lower stakes table, and one higher stakes table.

[I've played in some NL games, where I just got super unlucky for the first 3 or 4 or 5 buy-ins, and managed to make a comeback -- the 5th time is the charm I'm just imagining that I'm a player that was all-in with the best hand three different times, ended up getting stacked all three times (it happens!), and then the host tells me I can't rebuy and I need to leave the game -- I'd probably punch him, and I'm not a violent person at all.]

Thank you for that nudge.

I was first planning for the lowest-blinds mode, and later added the higher levels. For the lower ones (25¢/25¢, 25¢/50¢) I definitely want to be able to cover 3 buy-ins per person, but a) indeed you have a valid point in that of course not every single player will use that and b) for the higher blind levels this number could sure be reduced to maybe 1.

So, if the set is aimed to cover 20 players, for how many re-buys (either average per player or in total) would you gear the chip breakdown?

 

[AWenger]

I've hosted a $1/$2 game, with $100 - $300 max buy-in. 10 players. One time, there was about 10-20 rebuys total between all players, with most people who busted would rebuy for the full amount so the total bank was 30x the full buy-in. Other times, some players only buy in for $100 or $160, and a few may play on that the whole night, if they win, or if they lose they'll go home, so maybe the total bank needed that night was much less than 15x the max buy-in amount. It depends on your game and your players.

 

[AWenger]

Remember that I also want to be able to host 25¢/25¢ games, so I will need – at least sitting on standby in the 600ct pack – a few more 25¢'s for that mode. If I play 25¢/50¢ or 50¢/$1, a lot of the 25¢'s of course can be swapped out for a different denom

Ok. In that case, if you're sure you'll need more 0.25 chips for a very low stakes limit game (1 or 2 tables), I subtracted 200 $5s and changed them to $0.25s. I didn't really adjust the breakdown to have extra/spare chips, but if you need to do that, you can probably reduce the number of $25s for each barrel (25 count) of spares you need.

QTY DENOM BANK
------------------
400 $0.25 $ 100
800 $1 $ 800
800 $5 $ 4,000
100 $10 $ 1,000
400 $25 $10,000
100 $100 $10,000
-------------------
2600 $25,900

 

[Nex]

This is fine for Pot / No Limit, but it is never OK for Limit 60-200 workhorse chips are needed per player

My games will be heavily weighted towards no limit and pot limit; fixed limit would only happen rarely.

No $25s are no needed for any of your games

Covering 3 re-buys from 20 players at 25¢/50¢, I would need 600 $5's just for the re-buys. Of course this number will be reduced a bit when accounting for the fact not everyone will do 3 re-buys for the max amount possible, but it should still leave a substantially high number of chips. There's only 100 $25's and 50 $10's in that set, so I would probably have to remove even more chips of some other denom...

I think big games run better with 3 denominations, adding a 4th or 5th denomination if you have to eg 25c $1 $5 and $100s and higher if needed (My game uses 10c 50c $1chips with $20 plaques)

I am not fond of plaques at all. And yeah, the fewer different denoms in play the easier it is to count, but on the other hand I feel like they'll just look pretty dull

If you like the $10s get them

In the small games use 25c $1 and $10 chips, it will work if you issue lots of $1s, I jump from $1s to $20s (never use $5s and $10s at the same table)

Well, the current plan has 400 $1's in them so each player can have 20, in that regards it should work. But even though I like the $10's, I don't want them to dominate the table.

Here's a breakdown I'd recommend, for 2600 chips, especially for NL games where the $5 is the workhorse. If your games are centered more towards low limit, (assuming you can even find 20 players who want to play $1/$2 or $2/4 limit) then you may need more $1s.

/ QTY DENOM BANK
/ ------------------
/ 200 $0.25 $ 50
/ 800 $1 $ 800
/ 1000 $5 $ 5,000
/ 100 $10 $ 1,000
/ 400 $25 $10,000
/ 100 $100 $10,000
/ -------------------
/ TOTAL BANK $26,850

Ok. In that case, if you're sure you'll need more 0.25 chips for a very low stakes limit game (1 or 2 tables), I subtracted 200 $5s and changed them to $0.25s. I didn't really adjust the breakdown to have extra/spare chips, but if you need to do that, you can probably reduce the number of $25s for each barrel (25 count) of spares you need.

QTY DENOM BANK
------------------
400 $0.25 $ 100
800 $1 $ 800
800 $5 $ 4,000
100 $10 $ 1,000
400 $25 $10,000
100 $100 $10,000
-------------------
2600 $25,900

To limit the monetary risk regarding smuggling in chips as suggested, I'd be dropping both the $1/$2 and $2/$4 high blind games as well as the one birdcage that was geared for it, and the 600ct pack was never supposed to be brought to the table – instead it was supposed to contain swap chips (e.g. more 25¢'s when we do 25¢/25¢ to replace a bunch of higher-denom chips in the birdcage) as well as a bunch of replacement chips for each denom I have.

This makes the total count of "live" chips 1000, and up to 600 (= 600 minus the amount of replacement chips) that can be swapped with some chips in the 1000ct live set whenever required. As I already heard about the Nile Clubs and which was repeated here, they're said to easily break (even though I did not manage to break the samples I have with bare hands) I'll definitely need spare replacements, especially as I need to avoid re-ordering small amounts of chips because of the relatively high int'l shipping costs.

The remaining set should be heavily geared towards 25¢/25¢ and 25¢/50¢ games (50¢/$1 only rarely or with few players).

I'll draft a new breakdown factoring in the suggestions so far tomorrow.

I've hosted a $1/$2 game, with $100 - $300 max buy-in. 10 players. One time, there was about 10-20 rebuys total between all players, with most people who busted would rebuy for the full amount so the total bank was 30x the full buy-in. Other times, some players only buy in for $100 or $160, and a few may play on that the whole night, if they win, or if they lose they'll go home, so maybe the total bank needed that night was much less than 15x the max buy-in amount. It depends on your game and your players.

I could imagine that the financial situation of your players in relation to the blinds/buy-ins would heavily influence the re-buy behavior. Have you hosted smaller games too?

 

[Trihonda]

I don't have any practical experience yet.

I also do assume that at least a few of the posters here have more experience – however the only thing they've done so far is suggesting a change, but they did not yet detail how exactly this will ameliorate any of the flaws my breakdowns have.

Regarding the $10, I elaborated on this issue in my previous wall of text. Given the constraints described, how would you replace the $10's (or further modify the breakdown) to still make sure the 1000ct birdcage can handle buyin + 3 rebuys for 20 players at least as good as with the $10's, if not better, at the given 3 blind levels?

I did take the suggestion to replace them and tried out various alternate options. All of them turned out to cover re-buys slightly or even much worse than with $10's. But maybe I missed an alternate option that was actually better? Some commenters here might sure have more experience and have a valid point, but even with that I will not blindly trust them – I want to understand why exactly the suggestion makes the breakdown better and reassure myself that all other constraints are still roughly met. Remember the cap of 1000 chips in that birdcage, and remember the rebuys.

Btw. I actually did mention I want the $10's in it also because I like their design, but that's not the point I wanted to make

OK, you come here and ask for advice (we love to give advice and help people with no "practical experience"). That said, when you ask for advice, and admittedly have no practical experience, then you should plan on listening to the advice you receive (especially when numerous people are giving the same advice). However, you repeatedly just fire back saying you aren't going to take the advice. What you were really asking for is affirmation that your chipset plans were ok.

IMHO, I don't believe they're good.

We can only give advice based on criteria that YOU set in the orig post. That cost was a factor, and that you wanted to spread several different types of games. That is basis for the advice you received.

If you don't have any practical experience, I really question whether you have any idea what games you are actually going to spread. Identifying the games you will spread, requires practical experience from a host.

That said, I'll try to provide the WHY to my earlier advice.

As stated, the $10 chip is less valuable as a denomination in a standard cash set. Since value/cost was a factor, to use a chip denom that is only 2x the value of the previous chip, makes it impractical. It's much more practical to utilize chips that jump 4-5x the value of the previous chip. This gives you the best balance between increasing the set's bank AND playability. To have $.25, $1, $5, $10, and $25 chips on the table isn't practical. Easier to have a workhorse chip ($5's). Faster to simply cut out 3 $5 chips, than to cut out a $10 and $5 chip to make a $15 bet. Simplifies things. It just plays better. There's a reason that casinos don't use $10 chips all that often. They're well oiled machines, and they have it down to a science.

Also, you're looking at cost, and you'll need to buy more chips to equal the same "bank" that you could get by just using one $25 chip. More bank for the buck.

The other advice was to ditch the idea of having to have two separate 1000ct sets, even though they contain identical chips. This is a colossal waste of chips and money. Just get one big set, and use the denominations that you'll need for that particular game. The only (ONLY) reason I could see going the route of two separate sets is if you were running two different staked games in different locations (at the same time).

I like the breakdown below. It's only 2000 chips, easily stored in 2 bird cages, and has a bank of 21K. And IMHO, If you're running games with 21k in play, you best first consider getting some of that practical experience you said you don't yet have.

/ QTY DENOM BANK
/ ------------------
/ 200 $0.25 $ 50
/ 800 $1 $ 800
/ 600 $5 $ 3,000
/ 300 $25 $7,500
/ 100 $100 $10,000
/ -------------------
/ Total Bank $21,350

 

[Jambine]

After reading through all the responses it seems you have everything sorted out in the original post

 

[AWenger]

I could imagine that the financial situation of your players in relation to the blinds/buy-ins would heavily influence the re-buy behavior. Have you hosted smaller games too?

I have, the game used to be 0.25/0.50 NL holdem, with $40 max buy-in. I had up to two tables 16 players, and it worked with a 1000 chip set. More players may need more chips. I've never hosted PLO, but that game can need more rebuys per player.

As a host, I'm assuming you'd be able to get higher denom chips out of your backup set, if you ran out of chips with 1000 and needed more.

To think of the total bank, just consider the highest stakes you'd ever need for 20 players. The bank you take in the set should cover this substantially with left over chips. If you think you'll ever run out of chips, add a barrel of $500s even if you never plan to, or need to, use them, they still look cool in the rack.

 

[Kid_Eastwood]

Little bit off topic but you have some options also in Europe without going the intl route.

Just wanted to highlight that.

http://www.poker-production.com/page.php?menu=jetons
There, you'll find true Nevada Jacks, Lucky Dragon, ...
They provide personalized chips for 69c / chip.

http://www.kooperfrance.com/
There you've ceramics for about 35c / chip. Ex : casino replica, raging waters, garden, ...

You can contact them for personalized chips. For 2000 chips and more the quote is 38c / chip.
http://www.kooperfrance.com/categories-jeton-de-poker-personalisation-jetons-ceramiques-275.html

Sun-Fly from Germany :
http://www.gamblerstore.de/index.php/cat/c2052_Pokerchips--Plaques-und-Cashbricks.html

Personalized Sun-Fly from Germany :
http://www.personalpokerchip.de/
80c / chip for non aligned design and 90c / chip for aligned.

If you don't mind going to the intl shipping route, this website has good prices and nice design for Sun-Fly :
http://www.apollonchips.com/

Considering your higher stakes, you should go for personalized chips for obvious security reasons.

 

[Nex]

OK, you come here and ask for advice (we love to give advice and help people with no "practical experience"). That said, when you ask for advice, and admittedly have no practical experience, then you should plan on listening to the advice you receive (especially when numerous people are giving the same advice). However, you repeatedly just fire back saying you aren't going to take the advice. What you were really asking for is affirmation that your chipset plans were ok. [...]

As said – I'm not blocking everything off. I listened to all, and thought it through. Most of the initial suggestions however didn't make sense to me, at least in the way they initially were explained. You see I of course don't take every bit of advice instantly without even knowing or understanding why it'd be better.

But in fact, you guys here have already convinced me of changing several things in my initial plan.

Little bit off topic but you have some options also in Europe without going the intl route. [...]

I did see all those sites when I was looking for alternative options, but none of their offers really look attractive

Regarding the Sun-Flys, the only stock design I like is the Mosaics – which GamblerStore doesn't carry. The price per chip Apollon has them for is already a good bit higher than the Nile Clubs, and since they only ship via UPS (air) shipping is going to add a 3-figure number to the total cost. Would however be a little bit cheaper than the 0,79€/chip I've seen one german shop (with cheap shipping) ask for them if I ordered 1600. In the end that'd still cost me 400-450 bucks more than the same amount of Nile Clubs, or differently put, I could get something around 2500 Nile Clubs for the price I'd pay for 1600 Mosaics.

But, since it's still a stock chip (hence easier to fake/smuggle in) it doesn't really give me any substantial benefit other than the maybe slightly higher chip quality. Same goes for all the other non-customs e.g. from the french store. Not sure if that's really worth the big price hike when even getting a decent amount of replacement chips for the Nile Clubs is much cheaper.

Lucky Dragon I find very bland and the Nevada Jacks just butt ugly :/

Regarding the personalized SF ceramics, their price per chip is already going to a level where I don't really feel it'd be still worth dealing with "only" printed ceramics in the first place. I'd then rather save up a lot more money and get real high quality custom clays.

-----

So now I'm at the following:

I want a somewhat cheap (= affordable without saving up much more) set, but still higher quality than plastic laser chips, just to be able to get started with low cash games. Much later down the road, when we up the stakes, I'll head for custom clays – by that time I will also have the big $$$ required for them.

For the ceramics –

I will cut one of the birdcages, namely the one for $1/$2 and $2/$4.
I'm only going to play low stakes with the non-custom Nile Club ceramics, which is a level where security seems still manageable to me as I detailed earlier.

I still target the remaining set to cover 20 players in parallel, but heavily reduce the big number of total re-buys the set should cover that I had as a requirement earlier.

Leaves only one 1000ct birdcage for games up to 50¢/$1 blinds but predominantly used for 25¢/50¢ and 25¢/25¢.
I've now made a new breakdown draft for this:

• 25¢ x 175 (160)
  
• $1 x 400
  
• $5 x 350 (365)
  
• $25 x 75

After swapping (numbers in braces), total bank=$4140, so $207 per player. Covers one rebuy at 50¢/$1 with some leftovers or still 3 rebuys at 25¢/50¢, though with the swap set, I can further lower the amount of $25's in the play set a bit to bring in some more $5's if we don't need this many re-buys. Bank would be at $3440 ($172/player) if I bump the $5's to 400 and lower the $25's to 40.

Since I can only buy chips in increments of 25, I can't go with a perfectly fitting number of chips for the 25¢'s (target amount=8/player, i.e. 160 total, 15 surplus). What I can however do is order some more chips than what fits inside the cage and manually make chip splits as I like, which is what I'm doing with the 600ct pack:

I will still get a 600ct pack of extras that is not brought to the table and which will contain swap chips and replacements to cover broken chips. The swap set would be as follows:

• 25¢ x 225 (bumps main set to 400x, or 20 chips per player, for low 25¢/25¢ games. Could maybe lower to 75x extra for 12/player, or 150x extra for 16/player)
• $5 x 100 (backup for re-buys)
  
• $25 x 50 (backup for re-buys)
  
• $100 x 25 (to be used on very rare occasions; number already includes chips reserved as replacements)

The remaining 200 chips in the 600ct pack is 50 replacements each for 25¢, $1, $5, $25.

-----

For higher stakes games, as said I'd save up way more money (the money I save with dropping one of the birdcages is a nice start towards it at least) and get a set of custom clays from CPC with self-designed inlay, somewhere in the magnitude of 1500-2500 chips, but that'll be quite a while away from now. That however also gives me plenty of time to experiment with designs/themes. I've ordered a 10 inlaid chip sample set to get a feel for them.

 

[BGinGA]

Mosaics cost more than the Nile Club chips because they are a quality product.

Sounds like your best option for inexpensive temporary chips (until you upgrade to clays) is one of the decent slugged sets that sell for half of the Nile Club prices.

Check out any of the chips on the poker knights mold - Monaco, Poker Knights, Showdown, etc. They sell for around 16c each, and can even be cheaply relabeled if game security is a concern. They are lightyears ahead of common plastic ABS chips, in terms of looks, sound, and feel.

They would be much higher on my list of options for your application than Scrolls or Nile Clubs, and are cheaper to boot.

 

[mummel]

I recently got a Nile Club sample. While they chips look great and feel great to play with (shuffle really easily etc), they are just waaaaaaaay too slippery to stack or handle properly at the table. I would avoid these chips. But get a sample for your wall. They look great!

 

[mummel]

Check out any of the chips on the poker knights mold - Monaco, Poker Knights, Showdown, etc. They sell for around 16c each, and can even be cheaply relabeled if game security is a concern. They are lightyears ahead of common plastic ABS chips, in terms of looks, sound, and feel.

The Bluff Canyons are the cheapest chip of the lot and I think they look extremely attractive design wise. If it wasnt for the tears on the edges from the injection molding process, these chips would be a slam dunk for the budget conscious.