[smitty007]

Hey everyone, alright, so this is pretty long, but I could really use some insight here.
I was wondering about "typical" breakdowns. It seems like most poker retailers, and a lot of places that offer breakdown advice always offer and suggest the same breakdown for 500 chips and double it for 1000:

200
150
100
50

Having spent some time on this site looking at other people's breakdowns and getting advice from others about it, I have never really seen anyone that uses the above chip breakdown.

I was wondering if there is something I am missing here? Is the above breakdown the typical breakdown for a non tournament style or a game with no initial buy-in? Is it the home game breakdown for if you are just passing out as many of the chips as possible depending on how many people you have playing?

The reason I'm wondering is because I'm trying to buy a 1000 chip set, that I could split into two 500 chip sets.

1000 chips usage:
-T10,000 tourney
-20 people
-25/50 starting blinds
-medium to large starting stack

I also want to be able to split the 1000 chips into two 500 chip sets.

Each 500 chip set usage:
- Hold a big starting stack home game
-10 people or so
-tournament style with no buy-in, each player just starts with the same big stack
-25/50 starting blinds

For the 20 person tourney I would use 5000's, but for my home game I would probaby only use up to 1000's, maybe use a couple 5000's if needed. And for the home game I only really need to fully color up the 25's and 100's, even though we usually end up continuing to use the 100's a little for betting and blinds toward the end.

I have gone through so many different breakdown's that I have confused myself now. Anyone have any ideas?

At this point I'm sitting at a breakdown of:
240 - 25's
300 - 100's
240 - 500's
200 - 1000's
20 - 5000's

The only thing is if I split this into two 500 chip sets it only leaves me with 120x25's, which only gives 12x25's to start with for my 10 person home game.......I've gone cross-eyed...help

[ky70]

Based on your critirea, this is what I came up with a 500 count chip set (just double for a 1000 chipset)

160 x $25
160 x $100
100 x $500
50 x $1000
30 x $5000
--------------
500 chips totaling 270k

10 player T10,000 deepstack chip handout
16 x $25 = $400
16 x $100 = $1600
8 x $500 = $4000
4 x $1000 = $4000
-----------------
44 chips and 10k per player

Chips reamaining for rebuys and color-ups (with 10 player game in progress)
20 x $500 = 10k
10 x $1000 = 10k
30 x $5000 = 150k
--------------------
170k total

So as a 1000 chip set it would be:
320 x $25
320 x $100
200 x $500
100 x $1000
30 x $5000

[smitty007]

I like to have a lot of chips (500's and 1000's, maybe even some 100's) on the table at the end with three left and especially during heads up, what would you suggest for a breakdown with the same denominations that would give me that option?

[ky70]

Originally Posted by smitty007

I like to have a lot of chips (500's and 1000's, maybe even some 100's) on the table at the end with three left and especially during heads up, what would you suggest for a breakdown with the same denominations that would give me that option?

I think the stacks are pretty hefty getting down to 3 or 2 players. Using the same breakdown, with a 10 player game you would have these chips remaining per player...
3 players average chip denom per player:
53 x $100
27 x $500
13 x $100
------------
93 chips per player. If you decided to color up all the $100s, you would still have 49 chips per player (34 x $500 and 15 x $1000)

2 players (heads up) average chip denom per player:
80 x $100
40 x $500
20 x $100
------------
140 chips per player. If you decided to color up all the $100s, you would still have 73 chips per player (50 x $500 and 23 x $1000).

And this does not include the color up of the $25 chips which would be another 4k in chips. If you like more chips on table (like I do), do not color up the $100 chip.

I leave my $100 chip in play for my T10,000 tourney. I actually no longer use my $25 chip and have the $100 chip as my lowest denom and I start the blinds at $100/$100 for level 1 and I do not color up any chips so all chips stay in play. I use to color up but I didn't like the smaller stacks when it got down to the few players so I switched my game by dropping the $25 chip and leaving the #100 chip in play. This wouldn't give you the "deep stack" that you want beacuse the BB has to start at $100.

I hand out:
30 x $100
6 x $500
4 x $1000
---------------
40 chips totaling 10k and all chips stay in play. This also allows me to get more mileage out of my chipset since I can eliminate the lowest denom.