[rakrul]

Hi guys.

I've finally decided to go for some quality chips and have decided to go for some paulson chips. However I'm really struggling with the chip breakdown here since the paulsons are expensive I originally planned going for 300 chips, but this seems impossible but 500 is the absolute max of what I can afford.

I've been reading the articles here and at Home Poker Tourney but my problem is the different games we're playing. We're 6-9 players who play 2/4, 3/6 and 5/10 NL, 30/60 FL and tournament with 2000 in starting chips, with blinds starting at 10/20 and usually ending at around 300/600, 400/800 (no antes).
We've just decided to start with NL so we have no experience with this. We used to play 20/40 FL and tourney but the chips we have now are in 10, 20, 50 and 100 denoms so it's not really comparable as I'm going to buy 1, 5, 25 and 100.

My first priority is for the ring game. If it becomes too expensive we're just going to use the old chips in the tourney. So what breakdown would you suggest for this mix of games?

Edit: Non-denom chips are not an option.

[eM etiB]

You've got a pretty big spread of games that makes any breakdown less than ideal for all of them but I think you can make a useful set that will handle them all.

Here's what I would do.

100 - 1's
225 - 5's
100 - 25's
75 - 100's

That would give you $11,225 in chips. That's enough to cover your buyins for your 5/10NL (assuming you get 9 full 100X BB) and leaves some extra for rebuys. It also gives you a lot of 5's which tend to be the work horse chip for your lower limit games. This breakdown might be a little heavy in the 1's but I hate making change for blinds.

As far as your tourney is concerned I would switch from a T2000 to a T1000 and you could use the following breakdown for your starting stacks

10 - $5's , 10 - $25's , 7 - $100's
and use the following blinds

5 - 10 (You could add this level if you wanted to extend the play some considering the smaller starting stack.)
10 - 20
15 - 30
20 - 40
25 - 50
50 - 100
75 - 150
100 - 200
150 - 300
200 - 400
300 - 600
400 - 800
500 - 1000

If you didn't use rebuys you'd have enough chips to handle 10 players and could color up after the 20/40 level if you wanted to using the extra 100's.

GL

[dad604]

I know many people have this fixation on big starting amounts for tourneys but what is wrong with T200 vs T2000 if you adjust the blinds accordingly. Then you have have $1 chips, etc for your set and use it for both tourn. and cash games. Give everybody T200 instead of T2000 and start your blinds at 1/2 instead of 10/20.

The only reason for the big $ and/or different chipsfor tourn. is so that players wouldn't try to sneak them into a cash game and also to imitate the tourney you see on TV. I guess people rather would say bet or raise $1000 instead of $10 but if the ratio for starting chips and blinds are the same there is no difference in play.

[rakrul]

Yeah I am considering making it a T200 tourney insted and getting away with a 300-set. A T2000 is cooler because of the reasons you gave but it's not $200 cooler. Besides I have to pay 25% VAT on top and with shipping it's getting outside my price-range.

Thanks for the help though!

[eM etiB]

If you do go with a 300 piece set, I'll be interested in the breakdown you decide on. Unless you narrow the range of buyins you play for I think you're going to have a hard time getting enough chips in each to make a really playable set.

I'm speaking from first hand experience. I just ordered 200 more Paulson Pharaohs yesterday to add to the 500 I already have. I bought my original set to play a $1/2 limit game. Now I want to move up to $3/6 and eventually $4/8 so I'm adding higher denom chips.

Here's the breakdown:

100 - $.25's
400 - $1's - originally had 350
190 - $5's - orginally had 50
10 - $25's - just added

As you can see I have $1625 in total chips. It limits me to around $150 buyins when we have 10 people and that's a little tight for a $4/8 game.

I'm playing on adding 100 more down the road. I'll probably add 70 more $5's and 30 more $25's to make my set $ total equal $2,725. That'll be enough for $250 buyin for 10. I don't see myself getting much higher than that.

[rakrul]

I tried to work around a 300-set but the spread in cash-game was the problem not the tourney. I ended up with this setup;

$1 x 100
$5 x 175
$25 x 150
$100 x 75

This was based on your setup but I reduced 5s and increased 25s. This was because we've mostly played FL and with 7-8 players on 30/60FL 100 pcs seemed too little. The $5 will still be the workhorse but ~20 per player should be enough.

This setup also allows a T1000 tourney and the total value will be 12.225 allowing for rebuys on 5/10 games too. I doubt we'll reach 8 players here and even with 8, we still have enough for 4 full rebuys. Since I ordered a sample of 2 of each, I made the order with that in mind and ordered 8 $500 as well. If we have 12k in play, I'm sure the $500 can change with one of the lucky sobs that is winning.

Once again, thanks for the imput. Until reality comes crashing down on me, I'm feeling confident that this was a very good breakdown.

Edit: typo