Tourney Denoms towards the end game (1 Viewer)

Number of denoms on the table at the end?

  • 2

    Votes: 13 72.2%
  • 3

    Votes: 5 27.8%

  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .

SixSpeedFury

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Towards the end of the tournament, how many denoms do you guys prefer to have on the table?
 
Ideally? 2 if the set I have can cover it. If I have a set with a low number of high denominational chips (my Riverboats for example have a 160/160/100/60/20 breakdown for a T10000 base tournament), I have no choice but to have 500's on the table close to the end of the game because there aren't enough T1000's to color up the T500's. T5000's can be used, but if there's lots of rebuys, there aren't many to go around.
 
Typically two denominations, with an apporoximate 80%-20% to 90%-10% breakdown, and between 80-160 total chips in play (i consider 120 total chips as the 'sweet spot' once three-handed).

For T25- and T100-base sets, T1000s color-up the T25/T100 chips, and T5000s color-up the T500 chips. Unless the stacks are huge (or there are many tables), T25k chips are not required (and generally only 2-5 chips are needed even then).
 
Typically two denominations, with an apporoximate 80%-20% to 90%-10% breakdown, and between 80-160 total chips in play (i consider 120 total chips as the 'sweet spot' once three-handed).

For T25- and T100-base sets, T1000s color-up the T25/T100 chips, and T5000s color-up the T500 chips. Unless the stacks are huge (or there are many tables), T25k chips are not required (and generally only 2-5 chips are needed even then).
At what number of players would you think a T25K chip would be beneficial? A full 2 table freezeout game would easily have 350+ chips spread among the last few player. With re-buys and/or add-ons that would be over 400. A 3rd table would would be over 600 chips in play and obviously seeing much higher blind levels that a single table. So where do you think the break point would be where high denom chips need to be introduced?
 
This may be presumptuous, but this is how I would apply math to @BGinGA 's recommendation.

If you are targeting 120 chips in a 9:1 ratio of T5K:T25K that would be 108*T5K and 12*T25K, which means the final chips in play total T840K (540K in T5Ks plus 300K in T25K). So to get T840K in play, you need 84 entries at T10K, which would be about 56 player tournament with a 50% re-entry rate. (And I know BG would consider 50% re-entry to usually be an overestimate.) So I think if you are talking T10K tournament, you are really looking at only "needing" T25K chips in tournaments that are 5-tables plus.

If you increase the starting stack, then T25K chips would have this sort of use with a smaller field. At T20K per entry, you then only need 42 entries, or 28 players with a 50% re-entry rate to get the same T840K in play. So 3 tables in that case.

Aside from starting stack there are other dials to be tweaked on this calculation. You can look at doing 4:1 of the last two denominations, but that would raise the threshold of the value for the ideal final 120 chips in play. You can change your target up or down for how many chips you like at the end of the game as well.

Hope this helps.
 
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At what number of players would you think a T25K chip would be beneficial? A full 2 table freezeout game would easily have 350+ chips spread among the last few player. With re-buys and/or add-ons that would be over 400. A 3rd table would would be over 600 chips in play and obviously seeing much higher blind levels that a single table. So where do you think the break point would be where high denom chips need to be introduced?
T25k chips are really only needed to color-up the T1000 chips, so only for events large enough to last past the point where the blinds get large enough to no longer need T1000s.

That point is going to be a combination of stack size × field size. Typically, the largest blind level still using T1000s is 8000/16000 (sometimes 12k/24k), after which the T5000 becomes the smallest denomination in play. 20BB at 12k/24k is 480,000 chips, so 24 players with 20k stacks or 48 players wth 10k stacks.

And that's needing the T25k chips for just a single level before EOT, which is rarely/barely worth the effort to color-up. Because if you have just 24 players, that's only about 144 to 180 total T1000 chips, which converts to only six or seven T25k chips.

You need to start getting into multiple tables (3 or more) combined with large stacks and/or multiple re-buys (35k plus per player) before a) events start lasting well beyond the need for T1000 chips, and b) the number of needed T25k chips for color-up and subsequent play is significant.
 
That point is going to be a combination of stack size × field size. Typically, the largest blind level still using T1000s is 8000/16000 (sometimes 12k/24k), after which the T5000 becomes the smallest denomination in play. 20BB at 12k/24k is 480,000 chips, so 24 players with 20k stacks or 48 players wth 10k stacks.

Another stellar mathematical approach to the question.
 
At what number of players would you think a T25K chip would be beneficial? A full 2 table freezeout game would easily have 350+ chips spread among the last few player. With re-buys and/or add-ons that would be over 400. A 3rd table would would be over 600 chips in play and obviously seeing much higher blind levels that a single table. So where do you think the break point would be where high denom chips need to be introduced?
I'll give a less mathematical answer, this one is based on "feel".

In my experience, if you really want to add a denom (perhaps you have a cool plaque you want to get into play) you can do so if it's 1/20 of the total chips in play, but it's hardly needed. The more the denominator shrinks the more awkward it gets to add the denom, and the larger it gets the more it's needed. At around 1/30 it becomes really handy and 1/40 I'd say it's borderline necessary.

If I convert this to real numbers for the T25k, it means that it can be added for lols with around 500k in play, it's handy with 750k in play and starts becoming necessary from around 1 million.

In a tournament with around 350k in play I once added a single 25k plaque for the final table, then gave out a few more when 2 were left. They were hardly used at all, except for all-ins.
 
From my experience at Canterbury, they were running 80-100 player tournaments (8k start iirc) while never putting T5000 tournaments in play. The final table would all be T1000 chips after the last color up. That seemed a bit much, heads up we were basically shipping racks to each other. They have since started introducing T5000 chips with the later color ups to help.
 
Our last tournament (last year) just ended up with T5000 chips; around 100-120 of them IIRC. 30 players, T15K with (~15%) re-buys. Didn't feel it necessary to even add a T25k chip(s) into play since it was quite easy for the (amateur) players heads-up to simply match the stacks when all-in. Man, they took a longer time than expected to end with a winner!
 

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