I am in a very similar situation: also just starting hosting my poker nights and just got myself a good tournament set. I also go always overboard with my hobbies ^^ We have similar amount of players (we were 6) and a similar budget (we played the first tournament with 5€ Buy-in and 1 optional rebuy).
Cash Sets
Now I am also looking for a cash set, but I already fell down the rabbit hole and am looking for real Paulsons now ... my wallet already hates me for that. As an alternativ, I am looking at some
CC Pharaoh's from Apache Poker Chips. They also sell the similar Majestics and Royals. Although no comparison to a Paulson Set, its much more affordable and much easier to get to germany (where I live), since there is a shop in Austria selling those (but a bit pricey, going for 0,7€/$0.82 a chip instead of the $0.55). I had some samples and like the design. Furthermore, these sets have a 0.05 chip. Might me interesting for you. If you want casino quality, from what I've read you can only go for Paulsons or
CPC, however, IMO CPCs are still very expensive ($2.5+) and then you have to live with these little metal splinters. But many like them.
Define the stakes
Regarding the chip amount, I am still trying to figure out my setup. First of all, I think yo need to address
your stakes: Similar to you, my friends and I are in our late twenties and we don't want to lose "a lot" of money on a poker night which is supposed to be mainly about the company and the fun. I think losing 20€ a night is really the absolute maximum my friends are willing to accept without feeling too desperate. More casual will be a Buy-In of 5€ or 10€. Yeah, 5€ might feel a bit too less, I mean we all earn money, so 10€ might be just the right spot with the option to top-off or rebuy for those who feel like it.
So you might set the maximum buy-in to $10. Typically you go for
100xBigBlind as the
max buy-in. This is better than 200BB, especially for new players, since larger and deeper stacks lead to larger swings and requrie more skill (because they give a strong player more leeway regarding the bet options). Often casinos also go for a 150xBB max like you often see a $300 max buy-in at a $1/$2 game. The min buy-in is typically somewhere around 40-50xBB.
The denominations to use
When you know the stakes, you know the denominations. In general, you will only need 3 main denominations for a cash game, as long as they all have a 4-5x between them. A fourth for many rebuys or higher depths might be usefull in a small amount. The smallest one is for setting the blinds, the larger one is the main work horse and the main chip for bets and raises. The third one is the store of value and only for really large bets. You will only hand out 4-5 of those in the starting stack.
So when it now comes to choosing the chips, I am still struggeling. In a Cash Game, the value written on the chips is usually supposed to represent the real value 1:1. That makes it easy to estimate and size bets, since you will exchange the chips back against money (different to tournaments with a payout structure, where it is just about the place you achieve).
But this leaves you & me only with the option to go for a
micro stakes $0.05 based cash game. Blinds probably $0.05/$0.10 and this means the max buy-in is $10 (100xBB). But people could still go in for only $5 if they like.
However, you need to find a set with a $0.05 chip (not very common for Paulsons Casino chips in my case) and I really want to build a uniform set, so using non-denom chips for nickels is not what I am looking for.
Another setup, that many run for their home games is a
small stakes $0.25/$0.5 cash game. However, the max buy-in has to be $50 then and the min buy-in maybe around $25. For my games, this is just too much.
A
large stakes game like $0.5/$1 or even $1/$2 is then obviously also no option.
The amount
So the rules I came across when researching for this, was to buy a total bank of 3x 200BB Buy-Ins per Player. To cover for a single table of a maximum of 10 players this leads you to a bank of 6,000xBB. In the case of a $0.05/$0.10 cash game, this means a bank of $600.
I think you could actually halve this amount to 3x100BB Buy-Ins per player. This has you still covered for an initial buy-in of 100xBB and 2 full rebuys of each player.
For the smallest denomination, many people here suggest to only get 100 of them (10 for each player at a 10 player table). The reason for this is is that people are supposed to only use them to post the blinds and use the second denomination for bets. The main problem I face with this suggestion is, in my amateur games, people very often limp or min-raise. And for this, they obviously use the smallest denomination. In more advanced poker games, you see that people typically never only call the BB preflop, but instead fold or directly raise. In these environments, the smallest denom is really only for the blinds and 100 will be enough. But not for the players in my house. The consistent limping causes them to require a lot of the small denomination or you have to live with more change making on the table. My way to go is to use 200x the smallest denom, so each player could start with a whole barrel (20x) of this for 10 players.
The mid denomination will be the workhorse, so the main chip for bets. You will also need 200x of these, or better probably better 300x.
For the largest denomination, you will need some to cover rebuys and larger stacks. So also 100x or 200x. And a fourth denomination is basically unnecesary, but if you want to get one, maybe 20x.
So when assuming a $0.05/$0.10 cash game, I probably would go with:
200x$0.05
200x$0.25
100x$1
(20x$5 optional)
Total bank is then $260. To get up to a total of the $300, you could just add some more $1 and/or increase the $0.25 workhorse denom to 300x.
@Kid_Eastwood already gave a good breakdown up there. Simlar logic applies to all other kind of blind setups.
You might also have a look at this
video from Chris Manzoni. He shows a great breakdown.
So I am not an expert and still looking to host my first cash game with my friends. This is just my current point of knowledge after reading and watching a lot here. And I am yet not sure about my distribution either. I will probably also open another thread discussing my struggle when trying to adapt different denominations to my stakes, forcing me to introduce a coversion factor.
