Cash Game help me transition from all chips = 20 c to regular denominations (2 Viewers)

[brohit]

hey yall,
i play a 10 dollar buy in cash game about once a month. we have been playing for years in a somewhat unconventional system- all chips are worth 20 cents and everyone starts with 50 chips= 10 dollars. group of about 7 ppl are very used to this set up. usually the biggest loser ends up spending less than 50 dollars, most people up or down 20 bucks at the end of the night. problem as u can guess is we run outta chips at the end of the night, and have to earmark green chips as 10 dollar chips and constantly have to trade. now im buying a new set of chips- tiki kings, and i wanna transition the group into playing with chips that have denominations. im worried that they will not adopt the new system if i give them too few chips, as they are used to having 50 chip starting stack. my question is, if im buying 600 chips, how many of which denomination should i buy, and what should my opening stacks be? standard chips dont come in smaller than 25 cent- so im thinking about just buying $5, $25, $100, $500 instead of 5c, 25c, $1, 5$ and just telling everyone that its cents not dollars. i guess i could spend the extra cheddar and go semi custom, but i dont know.
is there a reason 5c/10c is popular with 10 dollar cash games? (we always just played 20c/40c(one chip/two chip)

what do u guys think?

 

[LeLe]

$10 for 20/40c is too small that is only 25bb. It be just become a coin flipping game rather than poker skilled game.

I will suggest a buyin of $20 at 10/20c stake game, unless your group play crazy usually the loser lost around $40-$60 at this stake

You can buy for $200 chip at $20 basically at 1/10 stake using $1 as $10c. It easy to divide by 10 too

A basic denomination set is
$1 x 100
$5 x 200
$25 x 160
$100 x 40

Giving you enough bank at $910 cash value

A starting stack for first 5 person will be $1x20 $5x18 $25x4, so you still getting 42 starting chip almost the same as your old 50 chip

 

[lewan]

i host £0.05/£0.10 as my group of friends are around 20 years old, its good as my friends don't play much when they're not at my place.
playing .20/.40 with a $10 buy in doesn't give you much room to do anything creative, as having around 20 big blinds in your starting stack you really just want to be going all in or folding.. it's quite surprising that you have managed to play for years with this system, since short stacked poker to me is just raw gambling.

when you're hosting a cash game you want to give your players 100 big blinds or more.

finding 5cent chips is hard yes! you suggested telling your players "dollars are cents" which works fine. i have used this and have had minimal issue. there are some other options such as using chips which don't have currency signs on them and are just numbers. there are also chips such as majestics, pharoah's, key wests and a few more which do have 5 cent chips. it all depends on your budget.

chips to buy: this one you need to make a judgement for yourself, based on the players in your game. if your players tend to limp in most pots, you might want more 5c chips, if its predominantly raised pots, less 5c chips.

I would go for:
100 x $0.05
200 x $0.25
160x $1
40 x $5

you could get away with less chips but I like to buy at least 500 chips for a cash set so there is enough bank for rebuys. if you wanted to go with 400 chips which i think you possibly could get away with given there's only 7 of you, you could buy 80 x $1 and 20 x $5.

this isn't orthodox but this is how i start my games when i play 7-handed. it gets all the .25 chips in which will be the most used chip.

give 10 x $1 chips for a rebuy. if they need change, ask them to make change with other players at the table

some people like to give set starting stacks for each player which is fine. i like to give appropriate starting stacks to my players. for my friends who like to limp-call / limp-fold, i give them the starting stack with more nickels, because they're gonna be using them more than the guy who raises all their hands with high VPIP, who i would give less nickels and more quarters.

hope this helps and makes sense, whatever you choose many of us here are here to help

 

[Colquhoun]

BRPro offers Tikis with the semi-custom option, so you can make whatever chip and denomination you want.
https://brpropoker.com/products/semi-custom-tiki-kings-poker-chip

 

[Chippychips]

This is a really nice breakdown of cash games that would cover 5c/10c game.

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/thre...me-chip-set-5c-10c-to-5-10.30897/#post-567890

 

[Colquhoun]

Honestly, if the group has been happily playing 20c blinds with a $10 buy-in for years, it will likely be tough to get them to change.
Even when shown why it should be 5c/10c, it may not be welcomed.

 

[SteveEH]

Honestly, if the group has been happily playing 20c blinds with a $10 buy-in for years, it will likely be tough to get them to change.
Even when shown why it should be 5c/10c, it may not be welcomed.

You may get some resistance but you can get a set that would allow "normal" 100 BB buy ins and fall back to short buy ins if necessary.

I'd design the breakdown based on how you described your game (7 players on average, biggest loser is down $50 and most others are up/down $20), and it assumes you're not going to grow to more players (although if you did you could just tip up with some higher denoms for rebuys):

100x5c
300x25c
200x$1

This would give each player $40/4 buy ins total. It may not be the most optimal breakdown, but it maximizes the quarters and allows for lots of chips on the table.

Starting stacks would be 38 quarters and 10 nickles per person (but put all the nickles into play giving one or 2 players more to start so you can easily make change).

With $10 buy ins you could do 10c/25c (40 BB starting stack) which would be similar to your current game, or give the 5c/10c a try (100 BB starting stack). If you try 5c/10c and people are still open raising for 75c-$1, you'd still be effectively playing short stacked. To transition your players off of this you could try communicating that the opening raise should be 3 big bets/30c, or 3 BB plus one for each person that's limped into the pot before the first raiser.

IMO, 5c/10c is popular amongst friends, not gamblers, that don't have the more money = more fun mentality.

Finally, my set consists of $5, $25 and $100 denominations that represent pennies and it works fine.

 

[SlowPokeTony]

Go with semi customs! It’s only 5 cents more per chip I believe and you can choose your own denoms. I’d say you could do .10s, .50s and $1 to make it your own style. Play .10/.20 blinds. People are suggesting .05/.10 or .10/.25 but really going with dimes and .50s will feel truer to what you’re already playing. Start everyone with 20x.10, 8x.50, and 4x$1. An 8 player set you’d need 160 dimes, 64 .50s, then a big stack of $1s or add in some $5s too for easy rebuys.


Edit: just noticed you play .20/.40 I thought it was .20/.20 at first. Nothing wrong with stepping up to .25/.50 to make it easier to buy chips. But I’d still suggest semi customs and go with .20 chips and $1s and $5s

 

[Shaggy]

I suggest going with 25c/25c blinds. This blind structure should play almost identical to your 10c/20c. I doubt people are folding their small blind for a dime.

Breakdown:
200x 25c
200x $1
100x $5

Total Bank: $750

Starting stacks for $10 buy-in and 7 players:
28x 25c = $7
3x $1

Rebuys can be all in $1. If more players join in... give fewer 25c in starting stack and more $1s.

 

[brohit]

interesting ideas friends. all of them are highly appreciated. i think im going to try and stress the 3 bb norm, by calling out my bets in terms of multiples of the bb(instead of the dollar amount) and see if that catches on. i think people limp a lot, no one folds half as much as they should. so ima go with semi custom tiki kings with a few extra 5c, and an emphasis on 25c pieces. will be a home cash game 5c/10c


200 - 5c - blue
300 - 25c - green
100 - $1 - black
12 - $5 plaques - blue
12 - $10 plaques - green
plaques just for fun, always wanted to play with plaques. and just in case we ever play $20 dollar buy in, i wont run outta chips immediately.

starting stack:
5c x 20 = 1
25c x 20 = 5
$1 x 4 = 4

or maybe
5c x 15 = .75
25c x 21 = 5.25
$1 x 4 = 4

im not sure about the colors yet, and still playing around with the starting stacks in my head. anyway thanks for all of your help everyone. and worse case scenario, we will just play our normal all chips = 20c with the new chips.

 

[brohit]

ended up going w
5c x 200 in blue
25c x 280 in green
$1 x 100 in black
$5 x 20 in purple
$10 x 12 lighter blue plaques

now just waiting for the mail to arrive

 

[SlowPokeTony]

That’s awesome! Love the plaques