Chipsets

The single biggest step you can take towards making a home game feel more like a casino is to buy some proper chips.

The first thing you need to decide is what sort of chips to get, and there are plenty of pitfalls here. Over the past couple of years poker has really permeated mainstream culture, to the degree that chipsets have cropped up everywhere, from flash department stores through to supermarkets and bargain shops. Lots of the sets, however, are cheap plastic rubbish that feel more like tiddlywinks than casino chips. But in case you’re in any doubt about what to buy, the easiest way to tell the difference between a good set and a bad set is by the weight. Most decent sets will actually tell you the chip weight on the packaging, so if it isn’t mentioned, beware. Generally speaking you should avoid anything below 11g, as you’ll be entering the realm of kids’ games. You can get chips as heavy as 15g and beyond if you pay a lot of money for them, but 11g is plenty for most casinos and should be good enough for you.

Once you’ve found some quality chips, the next decision is selecting how many you want. The most common count for a proper cased set is 500 chips, but for a single-table game that’s likely to be far more than you actually need. In a 500-piece set you’ll often get five different colours (100 chips of each), but it’s worth looking for sellers who’ll let you make up your own combinations, usually in multiples of 25. The number and make-up of your chips depends on whether you’re going to be playing tournaments or cash games, but either way a 300-piece chipset should be plenty for when you have a full table (typically nine or ten players).

The right amount

If you’re playing a cash game, three or four different colours of chip is probably plenty. For example, if you were to host a cash game with a buy-in of £20, your stacks could comprise ten 10p chips, nine £1 chips and one £10 chip. This gives you plenty of scope for pots of all sizes, and as a bonus makes the standard stack 20 chips; this is ideal because it’s the capacity of a single slot in a normal chip tray. It also makes it easy for someone to buy in for £10 instead of £20 by removing just one chip. Depending on your stakes, of course, you can substitute the values or amounts for whatever suits you. For a cheaper ring game you might go for ten 10p chips, six 20p chips and six 50p chips; this would give you a £5 buy-in unit, which also gives you a convenient total of 20 chips.

For tournaments, however, you’ll want at least four colours (preferably five or six) for chip values of 25 (optional), 50, 100, 500, 1,000 and 5,000 (optional). Including the 25 chip gives you scope for two extra blind levels early on if you want to play a game with a slower structure, but remember that you don’t want the last two or three players to be gazing at each other from behind massive walls of low-value chips, so you’ll need some spare high-value chips to swap them for in the later stages. (See ‘How much and how many?’ panel, right, for suggested starting stacks and chip denominations.)

Obviously, the more chips you have the easier things are to organise, but a 300-piece chipset gives you a lot of flexibility at the least expense. Better still, you should be able to pick one up on eBay for £15 to £20 including delivery, with decent quality chips, a nice aluminium case and a couple of decks of cards (probably rubbish) thrown in.

How much and how many?

So assuming you’re a smart but cheap host, and you want to get the best chips for your buck, what combination would you want in your set? For a tournament game with a maximum of ten players the minimum sensible setup (comprising multiples of 25) with a 300-chip set can be made up of four colours and broken down to: 75 x 50s, 75 x 100s, 100 x 500s and 50 x 1,000s. That gives ten players a starting stack of 10,000 chips each (100 big blinds, a good level for a medium-length game), in the form of six x 50, seven x 100, eight x 500 and five x 1,000, and leaves you 20 spare 500 chips – exactly enough to chip up all the 50s and 100s at the end.

For a cash game, you’d be better off with 125 x 10p, 125 x £1 and 50 x £10 (if you’re going to be using the suggested £10 or £20 buy-in units), or 150 x 10p, 75 x 20p and 75 x 50p (if you plan on playing with £5 buy-in units). Both will give you enough chips for at least a dozen initial buy-ins, and give you spare high-value chips that can be used to make more (by taking change from the big stacks).

Obviously there are a million different permutations you can work out to suit your particular needs, but the more thought you give it in advance, the more smoothly your games will run.

Stuart Campbell is assistant organiser of the Bristol & South West Poker Meetup Group, which runs single and multi-table tournaments and cash games at numerous venues across the region