Cash Game Question About Workhorses and Optimizing Cash Game Breakdown (45 Viewers)

[Chinaski]

I've made a thread previously about a cash game chip break down. Now I'm at it again since I'm working on another set. But also, I'm curious to the logic behind people's different choices. I'm looking for a optimal chip breakdown that will support $0.25/0.50 (most games) to $1/1 (sometimes) to $1/3 (rare) to $5/10 (future proofing) for 1 table only.

Breakdown Conclusion
I've read as much as I could find and here's what I concluded.

• Required Bank = 10 Players x Buy-in x 3 x (125% if PLO)
• Buy-in Amount = 100 - 200 bb
• Have enough higher denoms to handle re-buys
• Have enough workhorse denom
• 4x or 5x denom jumps ($500 jump to $1000 exception for some, including me)
• Keep blind chips at minimum, stack of 20 or less per initial buy-in
• Increments of 20 for convince of storing (25 if ordering from Tina)

Workhorse Conclusion
Here's what I concluded for workhorses. Workhorses for lower stakes is pretty much set, however for higher stake games, even though "theory" says the workhorse should be, say the $25 denom, it is instead the $5 denom because people prefer moving half a barrel forward instead of 2 $25s.

• $0.25/0.50 = $1
• $1/1 = $1 and $5
• $1/2 - $2/5 = $5
• $5/10 = $5 and $25
• $10/25 = $25
• $25/50 = $100

Required Bank Calculation

Breakdown A

• According to the required bank, this should support up to $5/10 (150bb buy-in). The question is does this breakdown support enough workhorses any given stake game up to $5/10 (150bb buy-in)?
• Is there not enough higher denom chips? What's the calculation behind it?
• What changes need to be made to support up to $10/25 for a 100bb buy-in? Does it scale?

Breakdown B

• Does this breakdown provide more higher denom chips?
• What changes should be made to support up to $10/25? Does it scale? It seems awfully close to $0.25/0.50 for it not to scale in some way.

Questions

• For those that don't like the $500 to $1000 jump. How do you deal with it?
  • 
• I've only ever played up to $1/3 and I know every game is different, is my workhorse conclusion correct for the higher stakes?
• Thoughts on all this?

 

[doublebooyah85]

Don’t worry about $5-$10 NL. If you get your game to those stakes your years away and just get a new chip set.

 

[BKisback]

^this.

Option A is plenty of chips for a variety of home game stakes.

 

[Frode789]

Personally, I would have gotten more higher denom chips for a set of that size with good flexibility in stakes (and future-proofing). 300 5s is plenty for one table, and you get 20 more 25s in play instead of the 100 5s. At least for my games, even at 1/1 the 25s are used very actively and having too many 5s get in the way and slow down the game with all the counting and stacking.

Adding 60 100s and 20 500s and rounding it off at 1K chips instead of 1020 (thus fitting in a 1K bird cage and is OCD friendly).

0,25 - 100
1 - 200
5 - 300
25 - 200
100 - 140
500 - 40
1000 - 20
= 1000.

/2 cents.

 

[davislane]

Thoughts on all this?

1020 and 1120 chip set sizes are tilting. 1000 peices works best for storage options.

 

[ChaosRock]

1020 and 1120 chip set sizes are tilting. 1000 peices works best for storage options.

Agreed!

Although, the exception I'd make for that is if the additional 20 or 40 chips above the 1,000 is an oversized special chip that you'll store separately anyways.

 

[davislane]

Agreed!

Although, the exception I'd make for that is if the additional 20 or 40 chips above the 1,000 is an oversized special chip that you'll store separately anyways.

you have TOO MANY chips. Are any of your sets <1000 peices?

You have no place in this discussion.

 

[ChaosRock]

you have TOO MANY chips.

What is that?!?!

Are any of your sets <1000 peices?

Yes! A few...

You have no place in this discussion.

Totally fair!

And related, I wanted to ask the OP what is he trying to optimize for? Is it how each game plays better or the bare minimum for each game. In other words, optimizing for enjoyment/playability or budget.

 

[Machine]

optimal

Let's start by defining optimal - Most favorable or desirable / Best possible; most desirable;

So this is subjective; most people want to crowd-source this.

I like to run games with as few fracs as possible. I can run a .25/.5 with 60 x .25; to me, this is 'optimal', and I've made this order from CPC. Meaning I only own 60 fracs for this set. I regret it. While I will defend that it is optimal for the game, I have OCD, and if I wanted to sell the set, having a full rack would be optimal.

I also found that you can use fewer fracs if you change the game to .5/.5, and the game plays faster because of the blinds, especially if people are distracted and not paying attention to the action.

In .25/.5 your workhorses are 1s and 5s

I wouldn't have more than 180 x 1s on the table in any game.

300 x 5 won't really support a 5/10 game; the average player should at least have 80 5s in front of them, so $400 each. Most of the 5/10 games I've played in have at least $600 in front of them

I would also size the game for 9 players.

While having 500s and 1ks are fun, it increases your risk and adds denoms to the table. I try to put only 3 different denominations on the table; in a 5/10, your workhorses are 5s and 25s.

 

[davislane]

Yes! A few...

 

[Jers28]

I’m confused, too. Was there a memo that we are supposed to be building our sets to the minimum required for the particular game we host? And by sets, clearly if you’re optimizing the set to bare requirements, you only need one set. Poker can be played with any cheap set of chips, so forget about clay, that’s just wasteful. I’m definitely doing it wrong if efficiency is the name of the game.

FWIW, I host mostly single table cash games and we mainly play $2/5/10. It’s capped at $1k to start, but we play match the stacks, so the average stack size is $3-4k by dinner break most nights. $30-40k is generally what is floating. But, if I open a second table, I like the notion of being able to have a smaller stakes table, so I have a few sets large enough to handle two tables for multiple stakes games. I’ll exclude those sets for my breakdown. I’ll just use my smallest set as an example for the sake of efficiency.

$2s x 100 (dealers make better tips when $1s aren’t even available, could easily live with 60, but I like full racks)
$5s x 400 (when we played $1/2, I used more $5s)
$25s x 300 this is the workhorse chip all 300 are felted pretty quickly.
$100s x 200 I have sets with one rack and that works, but the boys prefer more hundos and not using larger chips
$500s x 100 I could live with a barrel and trim the $2s by the 20 chips if needed, but I like 43mm chips for big boy chips anyway, so storage isn’t my concern.

1100 chips is far from efficient. I confess this could be trimmed to 1,000 and accomplish the same thing. I also don’t care. I build expensive clay sets for fun and the poker fun is almost separate. It’s still the purpose of the existence of the set, but as I eluded to…if your primary objective is to be efficient, build a set of Tina’s and torch your PCF account. Run, do not walk! Everyone on PCF who stopped after one set, raise your hands.

 

[exodus]

I see you have put a lot of thought into this and the only thing I would have to add is that I rarely see $10/$25 running at the casinos. Usually the jump from $5/10 is to $10/20 and then $25/50. I think that's why the breakdown gets awkward towards the top end. I understand that if you did go with $10/20 you would would need $10 chips which isn't ideal (using $5 denoms sounds like a pain) if you are trying to keep a specific chip denom breakdown. In a $10/25 the workhorse chips would be $25s and $100s so those would need to be inflated a bit. I would think the breakdown would look more like this:

25c x 100
$1 x 200
$5 x 300
$25 x 200
$100 x 300
$500 x 200
$1000 x 100
1400 Chips = $236,725 bank

 

[Kam]

Here’s my go to, sized for really up to $2/$5 with healthy amounts of chips on the table. Not efficient and not trying to be either:

100/200/600/300/180/20

100x $0.25‎ = $25.00
200x $1‎ = $200.00
600x $5‎ = $3,000.00
300x $25‎ = $7,500.00
180x $100‎ = $18,000.00
20x $500‎ = $10,000.00

$25+$200+$3000+$7500+$18000+10000‎ = $38,725.00 total bank

The extra $10k from the $500 is really excess, I prefer to have more playable denoms. There’s a bunch of threads on this topic, but there is an analysis that roughly you want around 5,000 x Big Blind in your chipset. So I’m way over covered:

$28,700/5000‎ = $5.74 BB exc $500 bank
$38725/5000‎ = $7.75 BB coverage with $500 bank

100+200+600+300+180+20‎ = 1,400 chips

I think going from small stakes up to $5/$10 is a really big stretch in a single set but go for it if you want. Most folk here won’t try to cover that and we’re usually entrenched in our views - so pick what works for you. The workhorse chip is really the $5/$25 and either side of that is preference.

GL

 

[caballo993]

The highest denom should be a barrel of your largest buy-in. All the smaller denoms should be able to bankroll 10-20 buy ins before digging in to the barrel. Option A is a perfect fit for up to $2/$5.

I endorse the idea for a birdcage and 43mm or plaques for the $1K. You can get a rack for the plaques from Tina, or a 3d printed rack for the barrel.

Or do what you want, but us with OCD would really appreciate it.

 

[JustinInMN]

Don't overthink this. Two barrels (40 chips) of workhorse chips per player is a very good target at these stakes. Since everything between 25¢-25¢ and 1-3 uses singles or fives as the workhorse, get 400 of each.

100/400/400/80/20 of 25¢/1/5/25/100. 1000 chips, Bank 6425.

The 25s/100s will very seldom see use except maybe at 1-2 or 1-3. Get some, but not a ton. I would not use more than 10% of your set on these denominations. Buy the chips where you will get 90% of your set in play before touching the high denoms.

I personally like doing more singles in stakes where the big blind is less than 1 and the buy in is typically 100 or less.

If you do these sub 100 buy ins with predominantly fives, you are never going issue more than 20 fives, obviously.

Sometimes people are good with starting stacks of say 8/18/16 for example if they want to emphasize fives. Personally, I like getting full barrels of singles in starting stacks and I would do something like 8/38/12. And if you do a smaller buy in like 40-60, then it makes almost no sense to issue more than a couple fives.

But that's the best way I can illustrate the "is the single a workhorse" debate for games with sub 100 buy in.

In general, I think future proofing is overrated and the effort to grow a game at higher stakes is underestimated.

It takes time to grow a game at any stake. And it's really only going to be a fraction of those players that will ever want to play bigger. If you have a player pool of 20 and you can get 8-9 players from that consistently for 25¢-50¢, it's pretty optimistic to think any more than getting 4-5 from that group to move up to 1-2 or higher. It's a different recruitment effort when you cross from home game stakes to small casino stakes.

Bottom line focus on making the stakes you can attract now work. If you can play for money, you can find more money for chips later.

 

[upNdown]

Not that it matters, because you’re only going to have two racks of $1s no matter what, but I’ve found in .25/.50 games, the $1 and the $5 share workhorse duties, but I’ll give the edge to the $5.
Though I’ve had sets with three racks of $1s, I pretty quickly decided that the third rack is unnecessary for a .25/.50 game. Now, I’ll never have more than a barrel of $1 per player, on the table.

 

[Chinaski]

I appreciate the responses, especially the explanations and logic behind said responses. To answer what I'm optimizing for:

And related, I wanted to ask the OP what is he trying to optimize for? Is it how each game plays better or the bare minimum for each game. In other words, optimizing for enjoyment/playability or budget.

Optimizing for playability, i.e. players not having enough workhorse chips, avoiding players having to constantly exchange chips, or having to go to the bank constantly to color-up. But also optimizing not to have excess chips, say like getting 1000 of each denom, while this will cover the games, it's a bit overkill. That line where we achieve playability while not going overboard in the number of chips.

Still working through all the responses, I'll see what I come up with now.

 

[Frode789]

This thread is pretty cool. Shows how much preferences can differ, both between hosts and players. Which is also why this forum is so interesting (and awesome). This is probably more "unpopular opinion" than the "norm", but here it goes anyway.

Personally, I would actively dislike having 400–600 $5s and/or combination of 400 $1s on the table as host or player, leaving little room for the other denominations in a set capped at 1,000 chips, if you want some flexibility. It can also depend on the player group preferences/play tendency, or country. In my limited experience, Norwegian/European cash-game players use the $25 chip quite actively. From that perspective, only 80 $25s feels quite low. Some of the players I've seen got annoyed when amassing large stacks of chips and wanted to color up quickly lol.

A total bank of ~$6K also does not seem particularly large for a $1/$3 game. I would aim for around $10-15 000, especially if the buy-ins or stakes sometimes ramp up as the night progresses. For perspective, for example 200 BB x 2 bullets each x 9 players, that would require a $10,800 bank at $1/$3.

In a $1/$2 game, if I am betting $30 on the turn, I am throwing in one $5 chip and one $25 chip every time. Larger bets are generally much easier to make and count with $25s as well, particularly if the players do not keep their $5 stacks neat and repeatedly have to count, organize and re-stack large piles from the pot. That can noticeably slow down the game. But again, this is probably group dependent. So in that regard there is a balance between the primary workhorse and the denominations that make the game run efficiently.

Finally, if this is a custom set, ordering additional chips later can be inconvenient. There may be another minimum order, additional shipping costs and possible color differences between production runs. I would therefore rather include some sensible capacity for the game to grow a bit, than optimize the entire set around the current situation.

 

[Chinaski]

FWIW, I host mostly single table cash games and we mainly play $2/5/10. It’s capped at $1k to start, but we play match the stacks, so the average stack size is $3-4k by dinner break most nights. $30-40k is generally what is floating. But, if I open a second table, I like the notion of being able to have a smaller stakes table, so I have a few sets large enough to handle two tables for multiple stakes games. I’ll exclude those sets for my breakdown. I’ll just use my smallest set as an example for the sake of efficiency.

$2s x 100 (dealers make better tips when $1s aren’t even available, could easily live with 60, but I like full racks)
$5s x 400 (when we played $1/2, I used more $5s)
$25s x 300 this is the workhorse chip all 300 are felted pretty quickly.
$100s x 200 I have sets with one rack and that works, but the boys prefer more hundos and not using larger chips
$500s x 100 I could live with a barrel and trim the $2s by the 20 chips if needed, but I like 43mm chips for big boy chips anyway, so storage isn’t my concern.

1100 chips is far from efficient. I confess this could be trimmed to 1,000 and accomplish the same thing. I also don’t care. I build expensive clay sets for fun and the poker fun is almost separate. It’s still the purpose of the existence of the set, but as I eluded to…if your primary objective is to be efficient, build a set of Tina’s and torch your PCF account. Run, do not walk! Everyone on PCF who stopped after one set, raise your hands.

Thanks for the explanations for each denom. I was hoping someone who hosts higher stakes would give some input as I have no previous experience hosting those stakes. For me, I would add the $0.25 for the lower stake games and personally I like the idea of having $1000 chips. As others suggested, ditch the barrel of 1ks for something like this: 60/40 of $500/$1000 of 43mm sized chips.

$1 x 200 which is essentially $2 x 100 = $200, but needed for those lower stakes games.
$5 x 400 should be plenty to cover $1/2 considering @JustinInMN saying 40 of workhorse chips per player is a good target.

What do you think of breaking down $500 x 100 into the 60/40 of $500/$1000 of 43mm sized chips? In your 2/5/10 games, would having that 2x jump be tilting?

The highest denom should be a barrel of your largest buy-in. All the smaller denoms should be able to bankroll 10-20 buy ins before digging in to the barrel. Option A is a perfect fit for up to $2/$5.

I endorse the idea for a birdcage and 43mm or plaques for the $1K. You can get a rack for the plaques from Tina, or a 3d printed rack for the barrel.

Or do what you want, but us with OCD would really appreciate it.

When you say a barrel of the largest buy-in. I don't quiet understand. Let me see if I follow. In the breakdown I just posted, $1000 is the highest denom. A barrel of it is $20,000. Assuming 10 players buying in at 200bb, means $20,000 is in play. Thus it should work. I think.

 

[TankingRowlet]

Don't know if there's any consideration of an "X" chip which would play as the frac in small game and could fill as another chip in a bigger game.
Haven't intentionally used a chip for this, but have played with $25 chip used as a frac in small stake and then the same chip as a $25 chip in when playing larger stake.

My players love plaques as big value carriers cause they have that "oomph" factor.

Only ever seen 500 -> 1000 in tournaments, have never used them in cash.
Feels much smoother to have 4x or 5x value increases.

 

[Chinaski]

Finally, if this is a custom set, ordering additional chips later can be inconvenient. There may be another minimum order, additional shipping costs and possible color differences between production runs. I would therefore rather include some sensible capacity for the game to grow a bit, than optimize the entire set around the current situation.

Yeah, I want to try to avoid ordering additional chips later. Like you said, additional shipping costs and having ordered additional chips previously, there were noticeable color differences. I want to avoid that and just fulfill it in one order. Though it's becoming a nightmare, I wish there was just some nice math formula that could compute it.