[Rando]

Originally Posted by wijwij

Of course if you think it is ideal, maybe it is ideal for you.

I have some ideas for feedback, though. First of all, Matthew has a post in which he suggests a limited chip set that can function as .25-1.00-5.00-10.00 or T25-T100-T500-T1000 and it may be fruitful to look at that.

Another thing I notice is that even with your current set, it will be difficult to color up or offer rebuys at the tournament, since all your highest level chips (green and black) are in play at the beginning.

It sounds like your planned 610 chip set involves 5 colors, and the denominations you propose are slightly non-standard:

100 x white (.10)
200 x red (.25)
200 x blue (1.00)
60 x green (5.00)
50 x black (20.00)

It seems like you are willing to use non-standard colors and denominations. If that is the case, then you might argue that you can play a .10/.20 game and a .25/.50 with the same chips, just making the unit chip have a different value! See suggestion at bottom of this post.

You are willing to have unusual tournament amounts too. Blind schedule looks feasible if you do intend to have a T150 tournament. Some might suggest a more standard tourney amount, but that will require different chips.

I'm not certain, but you breakdown for the .10/.20 game suggests you will be using .10, .25, and 1.00 chips. Maybe you are thinking of a .10/.25 game. Another approach would be to use .10 and .50 chips for a .10/.20 game. I have posted elsewhere about using white-red-green as .10, .50, 2.50 and how it can work. It plays like a 1-2 game but is worth .10-.20. See below for details.

------ suggestion ---------

I guess my first suggestion would be that you find chips you like to use as .25, 1.00, and 5.00 (whether denominated or not). Then I would suggest you get one other kind of chip as either your lowest in your low games (.10 in .10/.25 game) or highest chip in your higher games (something greater than $5, such as $10 or $20). The same chip might function in both roles.

Just suppose you chose orange for your flexible chip. Rest might be standard tourney colors.

[orange = 10]
green = 25
black = 100
purple = 500
[orange = 1000]

For .10/.25, I'd say a buy-in should be more than 50 bb. Try a $20 or $25 buy-in. Starting stacks could be 10O + 12G + 16K = $20. You would want to use purple chips for rebuys. The orange would never be used as $10 chips in that game.

For .25/.25, you could try 12G + 12K + 2P = $25.

For .25/.50, you'd put more 1.00 chips in play. Maybe 12G + 17K + 4P = $40.

So you might need something like

100 orange
120 green
200 black
80 purple

That's only 500 chips and is still quite a usable set. If you want more quarters, that would add action to some games. The following might be more ample at 550 chips:

100 orange
150 green
200 black
100 purple

For tourneys, you would use these chips as T25, T100, T500. Could do tourneys like T2500, T5000, T10000. To make rebuys or do the larger tourneys, the orange chp would become T1000.

I know other people have lots of ideas about the exact breakdown of a four color chip set.

------ another option -------

If you do prefer to go for the non-tourney colors, then you might consider something like a generic casino-color set:

white = 1 unit
red = 5 units
green = 25 units
black = 100 units

You can use a chip set with those colors, and then just adjust the amounts to whatever your buy-ins are. For example, if you want to play 5c/10c game, let 1 unit = nickel. Forget telling people that reds are quarters and greens are $1.25. Just cash it out correctly. To play a 10c/20c game, let 1 unit = dime. To play 25c/50c, let 1 unit = quarter. All those games would be small blind = 1 white, big blind = 2 whites. I don't think blue chips (10 units) would strictly be necessary.

If you go with a set like that, then it would be natural to consider a T200 tournament. I've done this with 10W + 8R + 6G as starting stacks, and using 2K as rebuys. For larger starting stacks you could go for 15W + 12R + 5G or even 20W + 16R + 4G to each person. Blinds would be very similar to your idea, starting at T1/T2.

As far as chip amounts, you'd want to be able to have people buy-in for 100 big blinds, or 200 "units" so the T200 tourney buy-ins give you some guidance. You'd have to decide if you like the bigger or smaller stacks, and how much you want for rebuys (2 black chips per rebuy).

bigger stacks (20W+16R+4G)

200 whites
200 red
80 green (minimum)
20 black (minimum -- only one rebuy)

smaller stacks (15W+12R+5G)

150 whites
150 red
80 green (minimum)
20 black (minimum -- only one rebuy)

Increasing the number of green and black chips would add value to the chip set and increase the number of rebuys, so something like this could work:

150 whites
150 red
100 green
50 black

I know many people here prefer that cash games use chips that represent specific coins and bills, but I think the above method also works fine. Just call the chips 1-5-25-100 while playing. Then cash them out appropriately to the scale of the game.

So this has given you at least two options that require only 4 chip colors and still give you some possible chip sets well under 650 chips that could work for 10 players.

Thank you for the lengthy reply (i'm not being sarcastic - i'd rather have more info/options/suggestions than less). I will have to re-read it later, it's early in the day and I've had only 1.5 cups of coffee so far, so I'm not quite clear in the head yet. I will certainly give your advice a closer look and see if your suggestions will fit with my vision - hopefully they will!

Originally Posted by Big Mike

That's some nice work wijwij!
But really, why not just get two sets??? Make one of them Faux Clay for cost effectiveness!

Well, I was hoping for the first set to be cheap anyways, This is what I was eyeing up.

Discount Casino Gear - 650 13 gm Pro Clay Casino Chips w/ Aluminum Case - www.DiscountCasinoGear.com

Perhaps looking to squeeze this much use out of one set is asking too much and I should look at buying one "good" set (these pro clays) and just continue using my plastic dice chips for my other games. I'd just need to decide if I want to use the new chips for cash, or for tourney play.

I can't dish out too much money in one shot here, I'm due to get married in a couple weeks and will have to balance my "poker spending" with "other expenses" or I'll end up feeling the wrath of the soon-to-be wife.

On a side note, does anyone know a good place to order from for someone in Canada? If I can avoid ordering through the states it's going to make my order quicker, and cheaper too (assuming prices are competitive).