[BigBrando]

I'm hoping that someone with more experience running an 8-person tournament can help me out with this question. I'm trying to determine how many chips I need and I would appreciate any and all suggestions.

I would like to use the following denominations:

$25
$100
$500

I'm thinking that I will end up doing a T2500-T3000 game, but I'm not sure what is recommended or what I should use as my starting stacks. Here's what I was thinking (per person), but please let me know if you have any suggestions:

$25 - 8
$100 - 13
$500 - 3

Obviously this would be for a T3000 game, but I would love to hear any other configurations for T2500 or T3000.

I assume that I would use $500s to handle any rebuy situations - but I suppose I would consider plaques.

Thanks!

[tomb1]

This can be done for a nice tourney. With only those 3 denoms, your blinds would usually start at 25/50. Some people might go with 25/25 to start out more slowly, but 25/50 maintains the difference between the SB and BB.

So with a $50 BB, I suggest a T$5,000 stack so each player has 100 x BB in the beginning.

Don't know how many chips you were intending to buy, but you could have an 8-person tourney with 300-400 chips. Getting 400 chips would let you handle more people and/or re-buys. Your re-buys could get a full initial stack, not just some big chips and have to make change on the table.

So if you buy 100 / 200 / 100 of the 25 / 100 / 500 chips you could support either starting stacks of 8 / 13 / 7 or 8 / 18 / 6 for 11-12 players.

[mizuchaud]

Not your question, but just to point out, you can use two denominations for a 8 person tournament. (This is the budget tournament version)
The third denomination definitely helps with rebuys, but I haven't had rebuys at our tournaments, so for me it was moot.

I used 120 T25's and 200 T100's with stacks of 12 and 22 (total of T2500) for eight people and it was fine.
We started with that 25/25 tomb was talking about for a slow start.
We just ended the night with two guys slapping stacks of ten blacks down for bets.

Felt manly.

Just in case you're on a budget and would like to build up a set over time.
(My situation)

For the third denomination T500, 60 chips would cover the entire initial amount in play. Tomb's 100 chips obivously would cover rebuys. And cover more than 8 people.

just an option.

[asam2006]

What about 8, 8 and 8 for a T=5000? Simple and easy to remember.

[Chiproll]

Originally Posted by asam2006

What about 8, 8 and 8 for a T=5000? Simple and easy to remember.

Ding! we have a winner. This is exactly what I did with my old sopranos chips. I ordered 200 of each green and black chips so i could give 40 chips to each player, which i thought was really cool. Then I realized this didnt allow for color up. Then I did some research and found out theres a better way. Namely, buying less chips which actually allows for more color ups (weird but true). So I came up with the ultimate per 10-player breakdown (not entirely on my own, but through research).

8 x T25
8 x T100
8 x T500

This is just over half as many chips as I used to use per player, but twice the value @ T5000.

If you can order exact amounts and don't need extras, then get:

80 x T25
100 x T100
100 x T500

Thats only 280 chips for T5000 up to 10 players. But if you have to do 25x chips, that will give u extras (which is good also) and you can order:

100 x T25
125 x T100
125 x T500

Thats a whole 350 chips and gives u extras to color up odd chips and replace damaged/lost chips also. Buying more chips for a tourney per 10 players is, IMO just a waste of money and time (spent coloring up). I say if you plan on using 1k, go full WSOP style and get 50 x 1k (for 400 chips total) and hand out 5 per player for 10K total. 50 more chips, double the starting value= awesomeness. Trust me you wont want/need to color up the T500 chips anyways.

[BigBrando]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! Those were all great ideas.

Mizuchaud, the more I think about it the more I like your idea since I would prefer to use more $25s and $100s for no other reason other than the $500 chips I'm looking at are pretty expensive per chip. Modifying my initial post based on mizuchaud's suggestion, I would do this for an 8-person tournament?

$25 - 100 (5times the $500 chips) - 12 chips per player
$100 - 200 (10times the $500 chips) - 22 chips per player
$500 - 20 chips (for up to 4 rebuys)

Initially, it may mean not coloring up but I hope to, over time, add enough $500s to cover it.

If you don't mind my asking, what blind schedule do you used for this T2500 arrangement?

Thanks again. I really appreciate the help.

Originally Posted by mizuchaud

Not your question, but just to point out, you can use two denominations for a 8 person tournament. (This is the budget tournament version)
The third denomination definitely helps with rebuys, but I haven't had rebuys at our tournaments, so for me it was moot.

I used 120 T25's and 200 T100's with stacks of 12 and 22 (total of T2500) for eight people and it was fine.
We started with that 25/25 tomb was talking about for a slow start.
We just ended the night with two guys slapping stacks of ten blacks down for bets.

Felt manly.

Just in case you're on a budget and would like to build up a set over time.
(My situation)

For the third denomination T500, 60 chips would cover the entire initial amount in play. Tomb's 100 chips obivously would cover rebuys. And cover more than 8 people.

just an option.

[mizuchaud]

that's what I did, 12 and 22.
First level of blinds at 25/25 then 25/50 to kind of ease the problem of a kind of low M at the beginning of the tournament (50 to start.)
You can go up from there in the typical blind fashion.
Seemed to work fine.
We didn't have rebuys though.
The 200 chips of T100 barely covers the T25 color up, so that's ok.

[Brewster]

When building my current single table set (TR Kings) I wanted to cover both cash game considerations and tournaments for up to eight players. My chips are nondenominational so I have total flexibility with the set.

This is the breakdown I finally ordered (in tournament/cash format):
T25/25¢ x 96
T100/$1 x 156
T500/$5 x 56
T1000/$20 x 16
This comes to 324 chips but will easilly fit into a 300 chip case with room for more. I ordered the 16 T1000 chips to be used as either colour ups / rebuys / or bounty chips in a tournament or as the BIG chip in a cash game.

Starting stacks for a T5000 (for 8 players):
T25 x 12 = 300 (no chips left over)
T100 x 17 = 1700 (20 chips left over to colour up most of the T25s)
T500 x 6 = 3000 (8 chips left to colour up remaining T25s and a few T100s)
This gives everyone a nice juicy stack to start with and makes excellent use of your entire chipset.

[BigBrando]

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone!