Unless you have extensive prior experience as a home game organiser, chances are you don’t really know what goes into setting the correct chip denominations based on the buy-in per player. The value of the chips needs to reflect how much money is up for grabs, plus give your participants enough currency to play with so that they’re not worried about being short-stacked right out of the gate. I’ll give you three simple chip value breakdowns as they apply to tournaments with low, mid and high entry fees.
Chip Values
As a standard, your home game tournament player’s starting stacks should be comprised of three to four different chip values/colours. For demonstrative purposes we’ll use white, red, blue and black as the chip colours. Here’s how they’ll break down:
White Chips = lowest chip denomination.
Red Chips = second lowest chip denomination.
Blue Chips = second highest chip denomination.
Black Chips = highest chip denomination.
Next, here’s some simple numbers to show you how many of each chip denomination your players should get when they begin the tournament, as well as what the exact denomination is for each chip colour.
Tournament Buy-in: $10.00 Entry
# of White Chips: 20 ($.05 ea.)
# of Red Chips: 20 ($.10 ea.)
# of Blue Chips: 20 ($.25 ea.)
# of Black Chips: 2 ($1.00 ea.)
Tournament Buy-in: $20.00 Entry
# of White Chips: 20 ($.25 ea.)
# of Red Chips: 20 ($.50 ea.)
# of Black Chips: 5 ($1.00 ea.)
Tournament Buy-in: $50.00 Entry
# of White Chips: 20 ($1.00 ea.)
# of Red Chips: 20 ($2.00 ea.)
# of Black Chips: 2 ($5.00 ea.)
If you’re using plastic chip racks (which you should since they’re very cheap and add professionalism) then it will be very easy to get each player ready to go prior to the start of the tournament, as each sleeve in a rack holds 20 chips. Also, don’t worry about having to colour-up to a next chip denomination if you’re only running one to two tables, as all you’ll have to do is swap out the white chips for the next highest denomination once the majority of the players have been eliminated.
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Chris
- Chris Laquinta is a magazine editor, content specialist and poker fanatic with 10+ years writing experience and over 1,500 published articles. Chris is a naitive of Southern California, where he spent his entire life learning gaming concepts and theories from relatives that had been former professional gamblers. He currently resides in Torrance, CA where he works as a professional content writer and part-time SNG professional.
