Tourney Top-Down or Bottom-Up? (1 Viewer)

[Wils]

Question about colouring up (another one).

Far as I can tell, there are two methods:

Bottom up: Have enough spares so you can colour up without affecting players' other chips (eg 100 5's need colouring up, so you make sure you have 20 25's spare to cover that, and so on). This seems least hassle, and is probably quickest, but requires more chips as you've effectively got chips you only use for colour ups.

Or

Top Down: You don't have spares set aside, you just give the players with the most 25's 5 hundreds, and use those freed-up 25's to colour up the 5's. This seems mst cost effective, as you need a lot less chips, but the real time colour up hassle is increased, as is the time it takes to colour up.

How do you folks do it? I'm guessing a combo of the two... Personally I like the idea of "bottom up" (more chips can only be a good thing, right?) but my wallet is making me reconsider...

 

[Psypher1000]

It just depends on my goals, needs, & set breakdown, but in general I prefer what you describe as a top-down approach. It's clearly the most cost-effective, but it's also not as much of a time sink as you might think. Yes, it might take a little extra time to color up 5's with hundos, 25's with 500's, etc, by moving chips around the table & making change, but you make up some of that time later on b/c you're not having to rack/color up as many chips in later rounds.

Also, I love to see heaps of chips all over the table in a cash game (although I prefer to see them in front of *me* the most), but in a tournament it's not often convenient to have large stacks in front of everyone, particularly in a MTT situation where you might be moving seats & balancing tables frequently. In such cases I find it prudent to keep physical chip counts as prudent & reasonable as possible.

 

[200 Motels]

Question about colouring up (another one).

Far as I can tell, there are two methods:

Bottom up: Have enough spares so you can colour up without affecting players' other chips (eg 100 5's need colouring up, so you make sure you have 20 25's spare to cover that, and so on). This seems least hassle, and is probably quickest, but requires more chips as you've effectively got chips you only use for colour ups.

Solution to this is give them a T500 instead of 20 T25s.

Or

Top Down: You don't have spares set aside, you just give the players with the most 25's 5 hundreds, and use those freed-up 25's to colour up the 5's. This seems mst cost effective, as you need a lot less chips, but the real time colour up hassle is increased, as is the time it takes to colour up.

How do you folks do it? I'm guessing a combo of the two... Personally I like the idea of "bottom up" (more chips can only be a good thing, right?) but my wallet is making me reconsider...

I like this idea as well. When coloring up, start with the player with the most small chips and take a few T25s from them as well and replace them with a big chip or two. This will give you some more T25s to color up the smaller T5s stacks with. Eg Big stack has 95 in T5 chips. Take his 19x T5 and 4x T25, (195) and replace with 2 T100. Now you have extra T25 for the next stack.

 

[Rhodeman77]

If you have the same group of core players it is easy to have them do most of the coloring up for you as they play.

Simply have the chip leader buy up the chip that will be colored out. That way you only have to color up the odd number from each player, needing only 1 chip per person and then color up the big stack with large chips.

 

[Poker Zombie]

I set aside a single rack with all the rebuy chips I'll need for the night. We color up closer to your bottom-up approach, but if someone has 400 in 25s (not unlikely because I do have bucket-loads of chips on the tables and racks for table to table MTT moves) I will nab one of their 100s (provided they have a dozen or so) and color them up to a 500. Sometimes a player will "buy" chips from other players (as the Rhodeman example) and this makes it really easy when I get to that table.

 

[Mental Nomad]

Personally I like the idea of "bottom up" (more chips can only be a good thing, right?)

If you have more 25s, and you like more chips on the table, why didn't you put them in the starting stacks? If more would have been useful, it would have been more useful before, when there were more players.

I feel it's more work, and counter productive, to run off a chip by bringing in chips that will, themselves, be run off next. So I won't run off 5s with 25s.

If there are 100 5s in play, I bring in a 500, and work from there. Bringing in 5 100s is second best, to me, if you expect to run off the 100s before the night is up.

 

[Poker Zombie]

If you have more 25s, and you like more chips on the table, why didn't you put them in the starting stacks? If more would have been useful, it would have been more useful before, when there were more players.

I like big piles of the lowest denom in play, and it's not useful to have massive stacks of T25s and T100s and T500s on the table at the same time. Coloring up to a chip that needs to be later colored up is more work, but it is not difficult work, and the payoff is moar chips on the table, and it also greatly reduces the "work" of making change (especially if you see a lot of limping in your games like I do).

 

[slisk250]

If the chips are available, my solution is moar chips. I have enough to color everything along the way and only want 200 or less chips in play when it gets heads up. I use the breakdown calculator on big blue since we don't have one...yet.

 

[Mental Nomad]

I totally understand the "MOAR CHIPS" angle. I'm here on PCF, after all.

I'm just saying that if I want more chips on the table, I put all the 5's and 25's on the table that I can, right at the start. I wouldn't reserve any 25's for running off nickels; I'd plan to do that with much larger denoms.

 

[slisk250]

I totally understand the "MOAR CHIPS" angle. I'm here on PCF, after all.

I'm just saying that if I want more chips on the table, I put all the 5's and 25's on the table that I can, right at the start. I wouldn't reserve any 25's for running off nickels; I'd plan to do that with much larger denoms.

Totally agree - Here is an example for a 20 person T30,000 with a 12/12/7/5/4 40 chip starting stack

You need exactly 800 chips for the starting stacks but an extra 220 chips to color everything one denom at a time until all you have at the end are 280 chips (all T1000 and T5000) If you really wanted to go max chips, coloring all the 1000s requires an extra 40 chips. You can get by with less 100s and choose to color the 25s and 100s at the same time but....moar chips. I never like starting stack with less than 10 chips of the lowest two denoms. Twelve is even better. I only would do stacks starting with 8/8 if I was short on chips.

 

[Mental Nomad]

I never like starting stack with less than 10 chips of the lowest two denoms. Twelve is even better. I only would do stacks starting with 8/8 if I was short on chips.

One of my tourney sets is built based on having up to 25 players with 8/8/4/2 for a T5K starting stack... but I never have that many players, so I've only played them as 16/16/8/4 T10K. I find I like the 44 chip starting stack size.