Need advice on first chip set / composition (1 Viewer)

[trigrman]

After plenty of time reading and researching, finally ready for my FP to get some validation on my choices.

My family is huge into board games and cards, with significant investments, but so far we've not strayed down the poker path. We are going to rectify this now. We will have VERY occasional large family games of up to 10 players, but I'm guessing most will be 4-6. Most of these will be tournament style, as we will just play for fun.

However, I do want to leave the door open to some cash games with buddies, which would also be 4-6 players and low stakes.

Because we have a big family get-together coming up, I don't have a lot of time to get samples--I know, I know. However, I'm pretty set on china clays to stay traditional, and there are only a few options for these that I like, top two being the Majestics and Pharaohs. I like the inlays better on the Majestics (black, smaller), but ultimately the colors, edge spot and inlay progressions on the Pharaohs I think will get the nod. Apparently the Apache folks are out on spring break at the moment, and good for them, but that has effectively shortened my window to order before the event.

I'm happy to hear concurrence with or second guessing of my chip choices, and will humbly accept all criticism of not getting samples before deciding. However, what I really need is some advice on the chip breakdown I should buy, which would handle both low-stakes cash games (likely $.25/$.50) and family tournaments.

Some parameters:

• I don't think anyone in the family will care if we use low denominations for tournaments, and there is essentially no risk of chips walking away and getting reused across game types. Hopefully that would make it easier to share the same set of chips for both.
• To handle the larger games, I'd like to get 600 chips to be sure to have enough. Trying to get my hands on the nice wooden Kardwell box to handle the 600 plus cards, but they have been difficult to work with (sent me one that was missing the removable tray and the key, and struggling to get them to exchange it). If anyone else has suggestions for nice quality 600-chip boxes, please send them my way. I'd prefer wooden with removable trays and a bit of room for cards/buttons.
• Even though I think overlapping denoms will work for both types of games, it might still be fun to add some higher ones in for tournament play, just because they look cool and I'm not shy about saying I like that kind of thing.

So, here's the question:

What is a good suggested 600-chip set that can handle the above, and include $.25/$1/$5/$25/$100/$500 denominations? Yes, I know this is likely more than absolutely required, but I think it would be fun to retain the flexibility to both potentially color up for tourneys, and also minimize the risk of running out of workhorse chips for cash games. I was hoping doing a 600-chip set would give me that.

I have my own thoughts on how many of each of the above denoms to get, but I'd love to hear from y'all on anything I've said above. Please weigh in!

Cheers,
/trigrman

 

[Moxie Mike]

First off, welcome to PCF

It sounds like you're looking for breakdown advice for both a cash game set and a tournament set.

Before I begin, it's important to note that your cash set should be separate from your tournament set. Even if everyone playing is a trusted family member, chips can get accidentally comingled if there's no distinction between your two sets. So plan accordingly.

Since you're playing low stakes cash games, you're going to want $.25, $1 and $5 chips for sure. You really don't need denoms beyond that if people are buying in for ~$50. So a breakdown of 100/200/200 would give you a bank of $1,225 which should be plenty for a $.25/.50 game. If the game grows or starts to get deep, you could get a barrel of $25s to cover any excess.

Luckily with a tournament set, the denoms really don't matter since the only thing that's significant is the number of BBs in your stack.

For your tournaments, you could run T10,000 with a breakdown of 10, T100 chips; 10, T500; & 4, T1000 chips. That's 24 chips * 10 players = 240 chips. Add a barrel or two of T5000 chips for color-ups and/or rebuys & add-ons and you could get by with a tournament set of 280-300 chips that will easily accommodate a 10-person game.

That's just one idea... I know that's a little more than the 600 chips you mentioned but I don't think you can assemble both a tournament set and a cash set from only 600 chips.

As to cases, @sheikh617 had one for sale a while back so you might check in with him. You might also check out mycasebuilder.com - they sell custom cases where you design your own foam using their nifty tool - so you could get a setup to accommodate your needs exactly.

Best of luck

 

[mipevi]

Welcome to PCF! I would get the below breakdown. Tournaments would use $5-$500 chips (or start with $1 for deepstack play).

100x 25c
150x $1
150x $5
100x $25
80x $100 (or 75x)
20x $500 (or 25x)

 

[allforcharity]

I'm sure you already know the general perception and security concerns of using the same chips for cash and tournament, so I will not repeat that here.

Yes, you can make a tournament structure using fracs and low denoms. For example, you can make a T0.25 base T100 structure with starting blinds 0.25/0.50 (200BB). 12/17/11/1 starting stacks, rebuys with 4x T25, colour up with T5. For 10 players, 120/170/150/50 gives you what you need for colour-ups and 10 rebuys with 490 chips.

Since CC's are typically purchased in multiples of 25 (and you want maybe some extras for loss/damage, and maybe a few extra rebuys), then round to 125/175/175/75 which brings us to 550. Add another 25x $1 for cash and 25x $100 for shits and giggles and you've got 600 (125/200/175/75/25). This also gives you a potential bank of $5481.25 for cash.

If you forego the $100 to give you some more workhorse $5, then 125/200/200/75 still gets you a bank of $3106.25. All with 4 denoms for cash and tourney. I will leave it to others to design the blind structure since I am a complete novice at that sort of thing.

 

[LeLe]

If you can going for STT set and just 4-6 person cash set, you can absolutely get a 300 chip set each rather than 600 set of the same chip

STT T5 2k starting stack (10/10/7/2) with enough chip for colouring up
$5 x 100
$25 x 100
$100 x 75
$500 x 25

25c/50c Cash set
25c x 100
$1 x 100
$5 x 80
$25 x 20

Bank of $1025 enough for 40 buyin of $50

 

[Coyote]

If you want a single set for cash and tournaments, the only secure solution is to have the chips represent the same value in both kinds of games.

So, if your tournament costs $20 to buy-in with 2,000 tournament units (T2,000), you could use 5/25/100/500 values, representing cents in both cash and tourney.

To do that securely with values of 25/100/500/1,000/5,000 representing cents in cash, your tournament T10,000 should cost $100 to buy-in.

 

[VulgarrViking]

Whatever you decide, GET SAMPLES FIRST.
I already own a 1000 chip tournament set and am considering getting a smaller cash game set but before I do, I already bought 2 sample sets and just ordered 3 more.
Sample sets are cheap and they give you a good idea of how the chips are gonna look, feel, and sound before you put down bigger amounts of money.

As far as chip denoms and starting stacks go, for less than 10 players I use fellow PCF member Chris Manzoni's setup.
22,000 in starting chips for each player.
8x25
8x100
6x500
6x1000
2x5000
My friends and I also use a stack of bounty chips, everyone gets one with their starting stack. We do $25 buy-ins with $5 from each player going towards the bounties. So if you knock a player out of the game, you can get their bounty chip and earn some money even if you don't win heads up.

 

[trigrman]

Welcome to PCF! I would get the below breakdown. Tournaments would use $5-$500 chips (or start with $1 for deepstack play).

100x 25c
150x $1
150x $5
100x $25
80x $100 (or 75x)
20x $500 (or 25x)

This is pretty close to what I was thinking myself--I was just struggling with the distribution of the bottom 4 denoms.

I should have mentioned, the tournament play I'm planning I don't expect to be for actual money. It's with the family, so chances are it will just be for bragging rights or some other non-monetary prize. Thus it makes no difference what the denoms are as long as I have enough of them--they don't have to be some multiple of your buy-in or something, since there won't be any buy-in.

Also, there is a very slim chance that any of my tournament players would ever also be a cash game players, and if they were they'd be my kids, so there is truly no security issue with using the same set for both.

/trigrman