[Catul]

Hi all, new member here - I've spent the last couple of weeks pouring over the information in the various forums and am close to buying a new (likely 600-chips) set that will be used for tournaments and cash games. I am considering denominated chips of $25/$100/$500/$1000 with a breakdown of 130/300/110/60. FWIW, strongly leaning towards these chips, but that's discussion for another forum

Tourneys will typically have around 12-14 players, but could be 16 or even 18 at times (I can get creative with the distributions when we have the larger number of players); we usually like to run for 3 hours max (always a freeze out, haven't done a rebuy yet), and it doesn't need to be very deep-stacked, so I'm thinking of starting with T2500 like this:

8 x T25
18 x T100
1 x T500

(Up to 11 players I could go 12 x T25, 17 x T100 and 1 x T500 for instance). I could easily go T3000 - T4000 if needed, just by adding some more T500 chips to the starting stack.

Cash games are $1/$2 NL with up to 10 players, usually buying in for $60 (and fairly quick rebuys for another $60 a couple of more times each). I can mostly use the $100/$500 chips as $1/$5, giving a starting stack of 15 x $1, 7 x $5 and 1 x $10; rebuys can be 10 x $5 and 1 x $10 (or even 10 x $1). I think I'd want to have lots of $1 chips in play, the more chips the better, hence the larger breakdown for the $100 chip in the set.

While there are good recommendations on this site for breakdowns for one or the other, trying to get the right mix for a specific cash and tourney setup is harder. In my case, the green $25 chip will barely be used in the cash game so I'd like to get as little as possible of those - but it is fairly essential in the 25/50 and 50/100 blinds at the start of the tourney .

Thanks for reading this far; I'd really appreciate any thoughts, advice, recommendations you guys have!

[Matthew]

For the Green 25 - figure the max number of people you would use this set for in a tournament and multiply by the number of starting T25s you would use.

If you will only ever have 8 people - and you want starting stacks of 8 x T25 - you really only need 64 green chips - which would be plenty to use as $25s in a cash game.

Ten people - bump up to 80 chips.

I would suggest starting stacks of 12 and think about ten people:

120 x T25
300 x T100 (this is 150 higher then I normally recommend for a tourney only set but because you want alot of $100s as $1s for cash)
120 x T500
60 x T1000

[A-Ro]

I agree with Mathew on the 25's but, I think you'll need more $500's and not $100's.

For the cash game (since you play $1/$2) the $1's will be your small blind meaning the $5's will be work horse chips.

[Catul]

Matthew and A-Ro, thanks for the posts. As far as the $25 chips go, I figure I need to start with a minimum of 8 chips per player in the tourney, so I'll need 120 chips in my breakdown to handle up to 15 players. Way overkill for my cash game needs, but no way around it right?

I do think plenty of $100 chips as the $1 in the cash game will be helpful - more chips "feel" better; but around 20-25 per player might just be enough, so perhaps 270 of those in the breakdown; and then up the $500 to 150 chips?

So the breakdown for $25/$100/$500/$1000 chips is 120/270/150/60, giving me a tourney starting stack of T2500 for up to 15 players of 8/18/1.

The harder part is making sure I'm ok for the cash game (which is what we'll play more often, frankly). While the buy-in of $60 is very low for a $1/$2 game, it's a friendly setup and rarely gets "big"; also most people end up rebuying to spend anywhere from $120 to $200+ for the night. I think 270 $1's and 150 $5's should cover that amount of money on the table, right? And A-Ro, having 60 $10's should handle the relatively smaller number of $5's as the workhorse?

I can also see the occasional need to use these in a $0.50 / $1 NL cash game - maybe those $25 green chips can be used as 0.25 or 0.50 chips in a pinch?

Finally, I'm not restricted to just 600 chips in the set - just thought that was a decent number that allowed some flexibility in using the same set for the two scenarios I mention above.

[A-Ro]

For the buy-in of $60 you guys should be playing .50/1 anyway, IMO. Playing 1/2 with that buy-in isn't even giving 50x the big blind. Either way, yes, 8 25's/person is plenty.

[mirageII]

You can run a T10000 and lose the T25... start blinds at 100/200 and this way you can buy more denoms that will fit in with your cash game.

Just get 100's, 500's, 1000's and a few 5000's if your rebuys go ballistic

If you get the 5000 as non-denom chips you can use these as 0.50 in your cash game too (In both cash and tourney you will only need a few of these chips)

Just a thought

mirageII

[A-Ro]

Originally Posted by mirageII

You can run a T10000 and lose the T25... start blinds at 100/200 and this way you can buy more denoms that will fit in with your cash game.

Just get 100's, 500's, 1000's and a few 5000's if your rebuys go ballistic

If you get the 5000 as non-denom chips you can use these as 0.50 in your cash game too (In both cash and tourney you will only need a few of these chips)

Just a thought

mirageII

I second this, we don't use 25's in our tourneys for our T10,000 game. Start blinds at 100/100 so it's still 100 times the big blind for starting stacks.

[Catul]

Miragell, A-Ro - GREAT idea to just go with a T10,000 tourney and lose the $25 chips completely! So now I can do a distribution like this for up to 15 players:

15 x T100
15 x T500
1 x T1000

for a decent starting stack of 31 chips; easily modified up or down depending on the number of players. Starting blinds of 100/200 (or even 100/100) is nice, and I can even add one or two T5000 chips to the starting stack for a deeper tourney if needed. We almost never do rebuys, FWIW.

I'm thinking of the new breakdown of $100 / $500 / $1000 / $5000 chips like this for my 600 chip set: 230 / 230 / 90 / 50. That leaves me enough T1000 and T5000 for color-ups.

For the cash game, that's plenty of $1 / $5 chips for 10 players (or even two tables); I could use the $5000 chips for the few $0.50 needed for a .5/1 NL game.

Thoughts on my new breakdown? I know it's a little different than the conventional 200/150/100/50, but seems to be more flexible?

Oh, I've got 10 plaques from the Bellagio GB, could throw those in for a fun mix

[mirageII]

Now the hard part is which chips to get ?????

[Catul]

Originally Posted by mirageII

Now the hard part is which chips to get ?????

LOL, discussing that here.

However, I am reconsidering my set makeup - I want to make sure this is more playable for the cash game, and wonder if I should get "standard" white/red $1 / $5 chips instead of using the black/purple $100/$500 - how do most of you feel playing a cash game with "other/non-standard" denominations?

If I went that way, I could get the same breakdown of 230/230/90/50 chips in the White/Red/Green/Black $1/$5/$25/$100 denominations. I could then run a T200 or T250 tourney with blinds starting at 1/2, 2/4, 3/6 etc (nice discussion of that here). But I'm not too sure about that, a T10000 tourney with 100/200 starting blinds "seems" like more fun.

Man, this stuff ain't easy!!