[seymour]

I know I know, this topic has been discussed to death. And yes, I've read the advice on chip colours/breakdown article, which is very useful. But I'm still having trouble figuring out what numbers of chips to get.

I expect to be using them mostly for 5¢/10¢ and 25¢/50¢ NLHE games with a max of 8 players, and I guess buyins of $5-10 and $25-50. Now, if I was only going to be using the chips for one of the formats, there wouldn't be as much difficulty.

So far, I've figured out that this might work (I'd like to keep it to 500 chips total):
0.05 x 160
0.25 x 160
1.00 x 160
5.00 x 20

For 5¢/10¢ I could go with 15/13/1/0 or 15/17/0/0 or 20/16/0/0 chips. And 25¢/50¢ I could use 0/16/11/2 or 0/16/16/1 or 0/20/20/0 chips, for the minimum buyins. But that wouldn't leave me with much for rebuys if we have 8 players.

Does anyone have any suggestions or comments? Tearing my hair out here...

[R Deckard]

So, you want to be able to play 5¢/10¢ thru 25¢/50¢ with the constraint of keeping the set to 500 chips or less--I think you will need some $25 chips to do this. Here's my suggestion:

At a minimum, you will need (parentheses are a suggested "round-up" value):
5¢ x 120 (125)
25¢ x 136 (150)
$1 x 96 (100)
$5 x 96 (100)
$25 X 24 (25)

Total: 472 (500) chips.

For 5¢/10¢ NL, this set will give you:

• Eight $10 Buy-ins:
  5¢ x 15
  25¢ x 17
  $1 x 5
  
• Eight $10 "Standard" Re-buys:
  $1 x 5
  $5 x 1
  
• Eight $10 "Big-Chip" Re-buys:
  $5 x 2

For 25¢/50¢ NL, this set gives you:

• Eight $50 Buy-ins:
  25¢ x 12
  $1 x 12
  $5 x 7
  
• Eight $50 "Standard" Re-buys:
  $5 x 5
  $25 x 1
  
• Eight $50 "Big-Chip" Re-buys:
  $25 x 2

The large denoms of the "Standard" Re-buy and "Big-Chip" Re-buy is the compromise that allows you to make your 500-chip quantity goal. But don't worry--just give out the "Standards" first, then the "Big-Chips" later if needed. There will be enough smaller chips in play for the players to make change for themselves.

[CaptLego]

Originally Posted by seymour

So far, I've figured out that this might work (I'd like to keep it to 500 chips total):
0.05 x 160
0.25 x 160
1.00 x 160
5.00 x 20

For 5¢/10¢ I could go with 15/13/1/0 or 15/17/0/0 or 20/16/0/0 chips. And 25¢/50¢ I could use 0/16/11/2 or 0/16/16/1 or 0/20/20/0 chips, for the minimum buyins. But that wouldn't leave me with much for rebuys if we have 8 players.

Does anyone have any suggestions or comments? Tearing my hair out here...

I think you're pretty close. You don't have quite enough total $ in that set (rebuys)..
If you want round numbers, you should be able to work fine with:
.05 x 150
.25 x 150
1 x 150
5 x 25
25 x 25

[seymour]

Thanks for the help guys, those numbers do look like they would work rather well. I'll have to bring these numbers along to tonight's poker game, I think my friends will like the idea. Doesn't matter, I'm getting the chips anyway (at some point this year).

Now my only problem is if I want to do this with the Pharoah chips... I guess I'd have to go with a NCV orange or something for the 5¢, since they seem to be rarer in chip sets. Other than the few Chipco ones on HPC, etc. Or I could get lucky and find some Starburst Paulson in a different colour, who knows. For now, plain ASMs will do!

[psy]

Originally Posted by seymour

Now my only problem is if I want to do this with the Pharoah chips... I guess I'd have to go with a NCV orange or something for the 5¢, since they seem to be rarer in chip sets.

This is what i did. I got 1400 chips... 200 of each color... all denominated except the orange chips. I did it this way so i could use it for values such as a 5¢ in a low cash game or a $2.50, 10¢, 50¢, $10, $50, $250, $1000, $2500 etc in whatever else.

Oh and i would always get extra of the highest value chip. You'd be suprised how often you'll need a bunch of them when you offer rebuys.

[seymour]

200 of each would definitely do the job for me Or even 150, really. Of course, I'd have to modify my current tournament chip counts, since I'm using a $5000 chip (I'd use plaques from the Egyptians for that if I went with Pharoahs for the rest).

Seems the rest of my morning might get spent figuring out ways to spend $1000+ I don't have yet

[seymour]

Well, that didn't take long at all.

I guess my ideal 1000 Pharoahs chip set (plus 25 $5000 Egyptians plaques) would be:

200 Orange NCV (for 5¢ and $1000)
175 Blue 25¢
100 White $1
100 Red $5
150 Green $25
150 Black $100
125 Purple $500

Now to save money for that, and hope they are still available when I have enough!

Odd, I didn't post this earlier today like I meant to. Thinking more, I'd probably have to check to make sure I had 500 for a cash game set, and 500 for a tournament set. Just because I'm picky like that

[rickrayl]

I was thinking about the same things before ordering my Pharaoh's and came up with a slightly different solution by using 2 NCV chips along with my $1 whites, $5 reds, $25 greens, $100 blacks, and $500 purples.

I choose to go with 200 Blue NCV and 50 Orange NCV. I can use the blues as a staple chip of differing values, depending on the structure (i.e., as $.25, $.50, $2, or $10 for cash games), and can use the 50 Orange if I'm ever in a situation where I need a few chips just for a small blind. (For example, if I want to play a $1-$2 limit ring game, I can use my white $1 with blue $2 chips, and designate the orange as $.50 just for small blinds.)

For tournament play, I'll generally not use the blue or white, and will use the 50 orange as $1,000, but if I have many players (or rebuys) I can always designate the blue as $1,000 and the orange as $5,000 and dramatically increase the value of the chips in play. When all was said and done, I started with 1,000 chips, broken down as follows:

200 Blue “NCV” chips
200 White $1 chips
200 Red $5 chips
200 Green $25 chips
100 Black $100 chips
50 Purple $500 chips
50 Orange “NCV” chips
1,000 chips total

While I think this would work fine for just about any situation I'm likely to face, I broke down during the wait and added 300 more, and now have 1,300 chips coming:

200 Blue “NCV” chips
300 White $1 chips
200 Red $5 chips
250 Green $25 chips
200 Black $100 chips
100 Purple $500 chips
50 Orange “NCV” chips
1,300 chips total

Anyway, just another way of looking at things. (I justified the increase to 1,300 by buying the 1,200 American Oak chip case, with a plan to put one rack of 100 in the top area, for total stoarge of 1,300 -- now if the chips would just get here!)

Anyway, good luck with putting together your "ideal" set.

[iluzion]

since you need such a wide variety of chip values, why not just get a set of non denom. chips?

[seymour]

Originally Posted by iluzion

since you need such a wide variety of chip values, why not just get a set of non denom. chips?

At least initially, I will have all non denom chips - plain circle square ASM chips. But, I like having different colours for each value, instead of changing the value on a particular chip for different games. It would be easy enough to just use my tournament chips (and add some $5/5¢ red chips in there as well) with a 1/100 scaling, but maybe I'm just weird