[nshockeyplaya]

Ok my friends and I always play cash games for a $10 or $20 buy in. The problem with how we play is we're very used to playing 10/20 cent blinds. However this is unpractical when figuring out a breakdown. We also like to play tourneys every once and a while so I want a flexible breakdown. I will use $ values and let them represent cents for the cash games for example $10 will be 10 cents in cash games. What do you guys suggest for a breakdown of a 500 piece set?

[wijwij]

My weekly game used to play 10c/20c blinds and we used white chips for 10c, red for 50c, green for $2.50, black for $10. That preserves standard colors and increments (1-5-25-100) but the units in play are dimes, not dollars.

More recently, we switched to 10c/25c blinds, and use various colored chips for 10c, 25c, $1, $5. This has the advantage of being easy for people in a cash game because people are familiar with quarters and dollars.

My recommendation is before you get a new set, borrow some chips and try out various options. Once your group decides which they prefer, you will be better equipped to choose colors and breakdown amounts.

For example, if you decide you wanted the 10c and 50c chips, then a starting stack might be 10W+18R = $10 or 15W+17R+4G = $20. Multiply starting stack times typical number of players and you'll start to see what breakdown you might need.

Conversely, if you want to use 10c, 25c, $1, and $5 chips, then starting stack might be 10 x .10, 12 x .25, 6 x $1 = $10, or 10 x .10, 16 x .25, 10 x $1, 1 x $5.

You'll also be able to ask your group if they'd prefer chips with denominations on them (which cuts down on "what is this chip worth" queries) or without (which lets you more flexibly assign values depending on game).

[jdunford]

Originally Posted by nshockeyplaya

Ok my friends and I always play cash games for a $10 or $20 buy in. The problem with how we play is we're very used to playing 10/20 cent blinds. However this is unpractical when figuring out a breakdown. We also like to play tourneys every once and a while so I want a flexible breakdown. I will use $ values and let them represent cents for the cash games for example $10 will be 10 cents in cash games. What do you guys suggest for a breakdown of a 500 piece set?

Welcome to ChipTalk!

Maritimes, eh?! I see you're looking at customizing some Nexgens. Well, if you want a set that's versatile for both cash and tourney, why not omit the "$"? That way, you have a tournament set that can double for cash games (using the values as cents), and maybe one day down the road you might invest in a higher-end set specifically for cash games (like chips from actual casinos or something)... which is why most of us are broke!

I'd recommend getting chips with values of 25, 100, 500, 1000 (for single-table T5,000-T10,000 tournaments), plus some without a denomination that will double as the $0.10 for $0.10/$0.25 cash games, and could also be used as a 5000 chip for tournaments or as bounty chips or something.

Traditional "Las Vegas" colours would be green (25), black (100), purple (500), and yellow (1000); "California" colours would be purple (25), white (100), yellow (500), and whatever you want for 1000. But they're YOUR custom chips, so really you can use whatever colours you want!

For a full 10-player table, I'd recommend the following for tournaments:
# x value (starting stack)
120 x 25 (12)
150 x 100 (12)
100 x 500 (7)
100 x 1000 (5)
-----------------
470 chips

This allows you to completely colour-up your chips to 1000s for a T10,000 freeze-out, or colour everything up to 500s and 1000s (leaving 200 chips on the table) which allows for 5 re-buys. You can also host a 10-player T5000 re-buy tournament with up to 20 re-buys.

Then I'd recommend 80 non-denom chips to use as $0.10 / 5000. They're not really necessary for the tournament unless you want to play a T10,000 with lots of re-buys... but they'll come in handy as small blind for your cash games. For $0.10/$0.25, just have the SB take back his $0.10 and replace it with a $0.25 if/when he calls/raises. Or you can do what I do and call it $0.125/$0.25, where your non-denom chips act as 1/8 of a dollar (and hence everyone starts with 8 of them), and you just round off when people cash out.

Anyway, this set will fit nicely in a 550-chip case, which are available on eBay (iirrc) and through holdempokerchips.com (HPC).

*EDIT*

Oops. Forgot to mention that if you go up to $0.25/$0.50 NL games, you can still use this set and have 10-players with starting stacks of:
12 x $0.25
12 x $1
1-7 x $5 (for $20 to $50 buy-ins)
and you'll still have lots of chips for re-buys and add-ons.