[smitty007]

Alright, so now that you have all helped me so much with Tourney breakdowns, I need your help with a Cash game set.

I don't play cash games, but am going to keep some blank t-molds to use for cash games.

Alright, so here is what I'm looking for...a good cash game set that will allow for up to a 10 person buy in of $10- $20, with maybe 1-$10 re-buy per person.

I don't know whether to play $.05/$.10 games or $.25/$.50 games?

I would like to start with somewhat deep stacks, maybe around 40+ per person.

I'm already planning on using Day Green for one of the colors (I was thinking the $.25 chip), but what other colors are normal for cash game denoms?
Canary Yellow???- $.05
Day Green - $.25
Horizon Blue/White - $1
Red/Plum/Hot Pink - $5

So, what say the masses?!

[BigKyle]

The most common

5c- this chip doesnt get used a lot so it is absolutely your choice, no standard
25c- often grey, blue, or white, depending on the $1 color, again no standard
$1- blue or white pretty much
$5- red of some kind

Now the breakdowns. For .05-.10 games with a $10 buyin:

20x .05
16x .25
5x $1
41 chips worth $10. For anything more than that use additional $1 and $5 chips. Now for 10 players you will need:

200 5-cent chips
160 25c chips
150 $1 chips
40 $5 chips
550 chips with a total value of $400. This is $40 apiece for a ten-man game, so that should be plenty for .05-.10.

If you want to run .25-.50 games, bump up the number of quarters and dollars and add a few extra $5:

200 25c chips
200 $1 chips
100 $5 chips
500 chips with a total value of $750. This is $75 apiece for a ten-player game, which should be enough. You may even consider adding a few $20 chips just in case.

All in all I would recommend:

200 nickels, 200 quarters, 200 dollars, 100 fives, 25 twenties. That should be plenty to cover .05-.10 and .25-.50.

[Diablo_Rojos]

you might want to bump your buyin to 20 or higher for the 0.25/.50 cent
game. Play becomes either really passive or really tight a buyin less then $20

[smitty007]

Thanks guys, a big help...one question, why is a $20 chip used rather than a $25 in cash games?

[Diablo_Rojos]

Originally Posted by smitty007

Thanks guys, a big help...one question, why is a $20 chip used rather than a $25 in cash games?

Ever see a $25 dollar bill?
I use $25 chips BTW

[smitty007]

Originally Posted by Diablo_Rojos

Ever see a $25 dollar bill?
I use $25 chips BTW

lol...good point!

[jdamonevv]

I have been a poker dealer for about 5 years now, and I've seen every imaginable color for chips, and every imaginable chip breakdown for players to bring to a cash game. Here's my two cents:

In order to have a really fun, loose game, you want each bet to be 3-4 chips. This makes the pots look huge, so whenever you win one it feels like hitting the lottery. At my house we play 20c/40c limit hold'em, with all 5c chips. For $5 you get a full rack of 5c chips, and if you lose them all and want to buy in again, you just get one stack of 25c chips. Usually you trade them to whoever beat you out of the first $5 because then everyone's playing with the 5c chips again and the pots stay enormous.

It's also important to keep this stuff in mind if you're ever having a game with a rake or a jackpot. I've played in a $4/8 game where $1 was taken out of each pot for a high hand jackpot at the end of the night. If we played with $1 AND $5 chips, there would have been pots where it would be hard to pull out $1 because the whole pot was $5 chips. Keeping all the chips to $1 made it easy to take the jackpot dollar, and the pots were really big.

For what it's worth, if you want a really nice set of chips this can get super expensive. I bought 5000 11.5g chips for pretty cheap to be able to play like this. They're not that nice, so we're upgrading to custom Nexgen RPT's (posted in Mock-up Forum). We always keep 15 racks of $1, 4 racks of $5, and 1 rack of $25 chips. This has not been cheap.

[smitty007]

Originally Posted by jdamonevv

I have been a poker dealer for about 5 years now, and I've seen every imaginable color for chips, and every imaginable chip breakdown for players to bring to a cash game. Here's my two cents:

In order to have a really fun, loose game, you want each bet to be 3-4 chips. This makes the pots look huge, so whenever you win one it feels like hitting the lottery. At my house we play 20c/40c limit hold'em, with all 5c chips. For $5 you get a full rack of 5c chips, and if you lose them all and want to buy in again, you just get one stack of 25c chips. Usually you trade them to whoever beat you out of the first $5 because then everyone's playing with the 5c chips again and the pots stay enormous.

It's also important to keep this stuff in mind if you're ever having a game with a rake or a jackpot. I've played in a $4/8 game where $1 was taken out of each pot for a high hand jackpot at the end of the night. If we played with $1 AND $5 chips, there would have been pots where it would be hard to pull out $1 because the whole pot was $5 chips. Keeping all the chips to $1 made it easy to take the jackpot dollar, and the pots were really big.

For what it's worth, if you want a really nice set of chips this can get super expensive. I bought 5000 11.5g chips for pretty cheap to be able to play like this. They're not that nice, so we're upgrading to custom Nexgen RPT's (posted in Mock-up Forum). We always keep 15 racks of $1, 4 racks of $5, and 1 rack of $25 chips. This has not been cheap.

thanks for the input j! very informative and gives me something more to think about...Welcome to CT by the way!

[jdamonevv]

It also suddenly occurs to me that I should point out this makes great sense if you're playing LIMIT poker. NO LIMIT is completely different, and I don't think you specified which you were going to play with these.

[smitty007]

good point, it would be No Limit...how does this change things?