So you've likely posted that you're looking for 500 chips for you're home game. - How did I know? Lucky guess 
Often when people post, they leave out important information, that would help with more accurate advice.
Consider making sure you've answered the following questions in you're post.
Specifically what game do you plan to play, NLH, PLO, Fixed or spread limit?
What is the expected average buy in?
What is the expected amount of re-buys per player?
What stakes do you plan to play (blind structures)?
How did you arrive at 500? Did you roll 2d6 x 100? Did you see a set on Amazon and thought, I bet those overseas manufacturers did a case study on the amount of poker chips needed to have a game and crafted those .12 chips just for me!
I'm going to ask a favor of you, if at the end of reading this, it's caused you to reassess you're approach to how many chips you need, please add a '+1' reply.
Okay the secret sauce - How do I figure out how many chips I need?
Its a calculation:
blinds + art + flavor = bank + emotion
Ta-da! Thats it.
The questions above will guide you to your needs, these days the cool kids like 100-250 BB as the range for buy-ins. Its considered 'deep stack'. The bank, this is the total amount of money at any given time that your chip set needs to accommodate. So from time to time people may lose their initial buy-in and would need another, this would be a re-buy, it would seem typically, players would be most likely to buy-in about three times.
Lets use an example of a common stakes game, .25 / .50, to give a run down of how to calculate the bank needs.
.50 (big blind) x 200 (number of big blinds) = $100 x 3 (initial buy-in, and two rebuys) = $300 x 10 (assuming Holdem (players)) = $3000
So how do we translate this into a chip set? Well this is where the art comes in, some of it is going to be experience playing / hosting, and some of it is math.
Lets start with some basics, well we need a chip that is less than $1, lets call this the fractional chip, frac for short. For now (foreshadowing) lets go with .25 as our frac. and lets just agree on a boring chip denomination - .25, $1, $5, $20/25, $100. Lets see how we do with arbitrary chip count of 500.
This is an often-made mistake, too many fracs. Also keep in mind our target Bank is $3,000
So we can see by the 2 examples in the table above, 500 just won't cut it. Maybe if we reduce the buy-ins to just 1 buy-in for 10 players ($1000).
You make a great point, the larger denoms will quickly get us to our bank goals, welcome to yourself sustainment, can't wait to see how close to that 500 chip count you get to, you're just a few realization steps from 600
Lets talk about a few flavor options, maybe you like a ton of fracs or maybe you want to be as efficient as possible, here's an interesting option, if you change to .50/.50 you can get away with less fracs. Personally, I prefer the .25s and I run as lean as I think possible, which is 60 x .25. The Pros go with a non-denom frac, so they can adjust it depending on which game they spread.
PLO on the other hand will play larger than NLH so you may need a bit more bank, or maybe you just want more bank than what you actually need just in case the game breaks through the bank one night.
I've 'stress tested' what I think is efficient in my .25/.50 (PLO) game. I didn't get there overnight, and I've had a lot of help from this forum. This is my actual break down I use for my game, it serves me well. I will note that I have more than this in chips.
.25 x 60
$1 x 180
$5 x 300
$20 x 20
$100 x 5
Would I suggest this? not really this is my custom order, this would be more on par for a generic breakdown .25/.50:
.25 x 100
$1 x 200
$5 x 300
$20 x 20
$100 x 5
Should you do 200 fracs? No, you shouldn't unless you absolutely love to have too many on the table, it will slow down the game, is that a big deal, nope. I will also note here these are single table numbers, and this is all an example, a guide so you can map out what your needs are.
Okay so let's recap:
Stakes / Blinds - the structure in which the bank will be based off.
'Art' - a realistic baseline of amount of chips, and the value based on the denoms, some experience helps
'Flavor' - quirks / presences on chip ratios and the affects of different options on the game play
Bank - the amount of currency in play that the chip set needs to support
'Emotion' - plus / minus the emotional appeal of chip amounts, I have both $20s and $25s; another aspect is a capped buy-in or match stack
Well, did I get a +1? Happy chipping, don't forget to use the search function and find the 1.5 million posts asking about this topic, there are other great post you can also find using the link in my signature (landscape on mobile)
- Machine
Often when people post, they leave out important information, that would help with more accurate advice.
Consider making sure you've answered the following questions in you're post.
Specifically what game do you plan to play, NLH, PLO, Fixed or spread limit?
What is the expected average buy in?
What is the expected amount of re-buys per player?
What stakes do you plan to play (blind structures)?
How did you arrive at 500? Did you roll 2d6 x 100? Did you see a set on Amazon and thought, I bet those overseas manufacturers did a case study on the amount of poker chips needed to have a game and crafted those .12 chips just for me!
I'm going to ask a favor of you, if at the end of reading this, it's caused you to reassess you're approach to how many chips you need, please add a '+1' reply.
Okay the secret sauce - How do I figure out how many chips I need?
Its a calculation:
blinds + art + flavor = bank + emotion
Ta-da! Thats it.
The questions above will guide you to your needs, these days the cool kids like 100-250 BB as the range for buy-ins. Its considered 'deep stack'. The bank, this is the total amount of money at any given time that your chip set needs to accommodate. So from time to time people may lose their initial buy-in and would need another, this would be a re-buy, it would seem typically, players would be most likely to buy-in about three times.
Lets use an example of a common stakes game, .25 / .50, to give a run down of how to calculate the bank needs.
.50 (big blind) x 200 (number of big blinds) = $100 x 3 (initial buy-in, and two rebuys) = $300 x 10 (assuming Holdem (players)) = $3000
So how do we translate this into a chip set? Well this is where the art comes in, some of it is going to be experience playing / hosting, and some of it is math.
Lets start with some basics, well we need a chip that is less than $1, lets call this the fractional chip, frac for short. For now (foreshadowing) lets go with .25 as our frac. and lets just agree on a boring chip denomination - .25, $1, $5, $20/25, $100. Lets see how we do with arbitrary chip count of 500.
This is an often-made mistake, too many fracs. Also keep in mind our target Bank is $3,000
.25 | 200 | Bank | .25 | 100 | Bank |
$1 | 200 | $1 | 100 | ||
$5 | 100 | $5 | 300 | ||
500 | $750 | 500 | $1625 |
So we can see by the 2 examples in the table above, 500 just won't cut it. Maybe if we reduce the buy-ins to just 1 buy-in for 10 players ($1000).
You make a great point, the larger denoms will quickly get us to our bank goals, welcome to yourself sustainment, can't wait to see how close to that 500 chip count you get to, you're just a few realization steps from 600
Lets talk about a few flavor options, maybe you like a ton of fracs or maybe you want to be as efficient as possible, here's an interesting option, if you change to .50/.50 you can get away with less fracs. Personally, I prefer the .25s and I run as lean as I think possible, which is 60 x .25. The Pros go with a non-denom frac, so they can adjust it depending on which game they spread.
PLO on the other hand will play larger than NLH so you may need a bit more bank, or maybe you just want more bank than what you actually need just in case the game breaks through the bank one night.
I've 'stress tested' what I think is efficient in my .25/.50 (PLO) game. I didn't get there overnight, and I've had a lot of help from this forum. This is my actual break down I use for my game, it serves me well. I will note that I have more than this in chips.
.25 x 60
$1 x 180
$5 x 300
$20 x 20
$100 x 5
Would I suggest this? not really this is my custom order, this would be more on par for a generic breakdown .25/.50:
.25 x 100
$1 x 200
$5 x 300
$20 x 20
$100 x 5
Should you do 200 fracs? No, you shouldn't unless you absolutely love to have too many on the table, it will slow down the game, is that a big deal, nope. I will also note here these are single table numbers, and this is all an example, a guide so you can map out what your needs are.
Okay so let's recap:
Stakes / Blinds - the structure in which the bank will be based off.
'Art' - a realistic baseline of amount of chips, and the value based on the denoms, some experience helps
'Flavor' - quirks / presences on chip ratios and the affects of different options on the game play
Bank - the amount of currency in play that the chip set needs to support
'Emotion' - plus / minus the emotional appeal of chip amounts, I have both $20s and $25s; another aspect is a capped buy-in or match stack
Well, did I get a +1? Happy chipping, don't forget to use the search function and find the 1.5 million posts asking about this topic, there are other great post you can also find using the link in my signature (landscape on mobile)
- Machine
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