[Brent]

I would like to get a 4-chip tournament set but I am having trouble deciding whether to go with 5-25-100-500 or a 25-100-500-1000 setup. Thoughts? Opinions? I assume this just boils down to nothing more than personal preference...if not, convince me why one setup is better or more versatile than the other.

[BigKyle]

I don't know about versatility, but I think 25-100-500-1000 is downright easier to work with than the 5 system. To me, a T5,000 or T10,000 is by far the friendliest. I have seen countless players, regulars and noobs alike, who have tried to raise to 60 with the blinds at 10/20, and to see them painfully try to count out two 25's and two 5's, or one 25 and 7 5's (somebody did it) is awful. When you play with the upper values it makes the bets so much easier to count out. Not to mention totalling stacks for all-ins becomes much easier- twenty 25's = 500, twenty 100's = 2000, twenty 500's = 10000, twenty 1000's = 20000.

[hachkc]

Thoughts.

1. One reason 5/25/100/500 might be better is that the chips progress at a 4x or 5x rate while the 25-100-500-1000 seems a bit different as almost no one goes from 500 to 2000/2500 so you might need more chips with this scenario if you run large tournaments and/or you want to color up from the 500 level.

2. If you don't use any chips higher than $5 for cash games, a 25/100/500/1k means you never need to worry about having the a $5 chip migrate from the tourney to the cash game. Not an issue if you have separate, different chip sets.

3. It sounds better to be betting larger dollar amounts for some folks.

4. You use standard colors and solid chips and play with a lot of folks that are red/green color blind.

[jojobinks]

people like big denoms more than they do 5s. it makes them feel like they're playing in the wsop. i recommend it b/c of that.

[BigKyle]

I must add: The 1,000 chip is often yellow or orange, and I try to make it the most-expensive-looking chip in my sets. You feel special when you throw out 5 or 6 of those on a re-raise, it just feels better.

[poislb]

I use the $25 to $500 method.

[huskerchipper]

I for one am an advocate of the 5-25-100-500 tournament setup. I think the simpler you can keep the denominations the better.......ie. I would rather raise $25 dollars than $25 million bazillion thousand dollars. Just seems silly to me. I do have a seperate tournament set of chips from my cash game set so there is no worries of the $5's sneaking over to the cash game. Just my differing opinion.

[MeridianFC]

FWIW (not much I know) I use the 25/100/500/1000. I'm using a variation on Texas TEARS so the blinds go up a bit more gently. The buy in gets you T2K but there are rebuys. I could theoretically get away without any 1K chips, but I did that to give myself some coverage (having 100 x T1K is obviously like having 200 x T500). The other tangental reason is if really pressed a 25-1000 set could be used as a .25-$10.00 cash set which is within the realm I normally play, though my cash set is denominated and my tourney set is not.

My breakdown is:

200 X T25
200 X T100
100 X T500
100 X T1000

starting stack:

20 X T25
10 X T100
1X T500

I do mostly one table though I could double that number if needed. I"ve got enough for color up and more rebuys than will ever happen at this point. Plus folks get decent size stacks, especially for the endgame. I introduce an ante at later levels so the T25s stay in play for a while.

[gwilkx]

i have one tournament set that starts at $5 and one that starts at $25, and use both regularly just because i like the chips.

starting blinds at $25/50 seems to run smoother in my 1-2 table tournaments. i also notice that when the blinds are $5/$10, peope raise to $50 or $75 anyway, simply because $15 doesn't seem like enough to chase people out. the third level is also much easier in the $25/50 game, because (as someone mentioned above) for some reason it's harder for people to put together a bet made of $5 chips and $25 chips, where as $25 chips and $100 chips is just more intuitive for some reason.

if you have no cash game considerations to take into account, i would recommend having $25 be your smallest chip.

gw-

[mac40k]

I had a 5/25/100/500 set of cheap chips and when I was looking to upgrade I went with 25/100/500/1000, initially just to avoid duplicating the denominations in the set I already had. It's true people like betting the larger denoms. I'm sure that has to do with the fact that everyone is used to watching poker on TV and constantly hearing Mike Sexton say, "This is a monster pot Vince. There's over a quarter of a million dollars in the pot already." Psychologically, people would rather be able to pull down a $6000 pot instead of a $1200 one, even if the relative value to average stack size is the same.

I planned to run T2500 with the set, but I can also comfortably do T5000 as well. I got custom labels on Nexgen RPT chips (my review is in the Articles section) with denominations, but no $ sign specifically so the set could double as cash set for $0.25/$0.50 blinds. I kept my old set so I could have a different set of chips for the cash game from my tourney set. Since those chips aren't denominated, they could be used for any value, but I prefer to use chips with denoms on them for the cash game and my group is used to not starting the cash game until the tourney finishes anyway since nobody other than me has two sets of chips. I'm not too worried about a 25 or 100 chip from the tourney being pocketed and then pulled back out during the cash game because I trust the people I play with and the effort isn't worth it for a buck or two. If I was ever short a significant number of chips after the tourney was over, then I'd just break out the other chip set.

My next set will be custom ASM's or Chipcos and it'll probably a T10,000 tourney set (to satisfy the players' desire to play for "bigger" tourney pots) leaving my current set as a cash game only set. Since I'm a packrat by nature, I'll probably still hang onto my cheap royal suited set even though it will definitely never get used again after that.