number & distribution of chips for first home tourney

This may be a silly question, but I've never played a live Holdem game despite tens of thousands of online hands, and I'm about to host a live home game -- it will be a tournament of 9 players, no re-buys, increasing blinds starting at 10/20, etc. I have a nice 2000 piece chip set with mostly white & red chips, fewer blues & green, and the least amount of black. I believe in casinos W=$1, R=$5, G=$25, Blue=$50, and Blk=$100. So the questions are:

1. Are those denominations correct?
2. Should I do the standard 1500 starting stack (as it usually is online)?
3. Most importantly, how many chips should I give out (which denominations, etc.) that would make sense for this kind of tourney? Thanks!

Hey honestly me too thinking about that!!!

and we also play some home tourney. It is nice to see you too.

When comes to your question, i suggest my distribution of chips stack among plyers.

I usually give it as 100/200 times the starting BB.

for ex:

say 8 members are playing and if the starting BB is 100(say) then give everbody a starting chip of 20k(200x100) or even 15k or 10k it would be good.

In A home game you have no use for 1.00 chips ....so you can determine whatever amount you want to make the chips...

White is normally the lowest chip and black is normally the highest.

Normal chip sets do not normally give you exactly the same amount of chips,so again you have to determine.

For a 9 handed game you can probably use 4 or maybe 5 colored chips


here is one variation you could use,,Based on 2000 starting chips

15 white value 5= 75
10 red value 10=100
5 green value 25 =125
7 blue value 100=700
2 black value 500= 1000

= 2000 chips

Some tips

Start the blinds at 5/10 or 10/20 your choice
Predetermine how often the blinds will go up( cheap dollar store timers work great here or timer on your laptop or phone etc.

Post the chip amounts and colors on a wall where everyone can see them.saves arguments

Use sandwich bags to store each 2000 starting chips and each time you start a game give the players a bag...you don't waste the night counting chips.

Have fun

At our home games we play 5$ unlimited rebuy until 300/600
2000 starting chips. 2000 first rebuy, 1700 2nd , and 1500 chips third rebuy

We use 4 $25 , 4 $50 , 7 $100, and 2 $500 chips

good luck and have fun

http://www.Homepokertourney.com

All your questions answered including many you haven't thought of yet. Download and print out a copy of Robert's Rules of Poker to have on hand for the night of the game.

I'd use one of their recommended blind schedules as well.

In Howard Lederer in his secrets of no limit hold'em DVD, has a sheet that tells what starting chips should be, how often blinds go up, and when to color up that is based on number of people playing and how long you want to play for.

It was the only thing of value in the DVD IMO.

We usually play 5 euro rebuy (unlimited) cash game. Everybody gets about 150 bb's deep at the beginning, rebuy is also 150bb of course. Ive seen some crazy hands in these games, like fh over fh on the flop. AA/KK/QQ pre flop allin and all kinds of sick things. One thing i always experienced is how richer the players are how more crazy calls/raises/all ins they make.

Our home games have been very good with the following:

10,000 starting chips

10 White $100 = 1000
8 red $500 = 4000
5 blue $1000 = 5000
Blinds go up either 15 minutes if good players that play fast or 20 minutes for slower players and blinds are:
100/200
200/400
300/600
400/800
500/1000 take out white
1000/2000
1500/3000
2000/4000 take out red
3000/6000
4000/8000
5000/10000
10000/20000 we never get this far even with 30 players

we also bring in green as 5000 and black as 10000 much later in tournament

we usually start at 7 and get in 2 or 3 games by 3 in the morning

Oh and to be able to get in the extra games once it gets to heads up we play 2 20 minute rounds (or 15) and if no winner by the end then it goes by chip count

Here's something from www.HomePokerTourney.com which, yes WVHillbilly, ia great resource:

Issue a total of 41 chips to each player - 20x5 + 16x25 + 5x100 = 1000 chips. This is a good chip distribution and your players will seldom have to make change. This chip distribution requires a total of 410 poker chips to host a tournament of 10 players. You will also need some T500 chips for a color-ups and to allow players to rebuy - so make sure to add at least fifty T500 (Purple) chips to your poker chip set. This will also allow you to issue each player additional T500 chips to create a T1500 or T2000 chip buyin.

I used this as a general guideline, and it worked great!

p.s. I also found this nice little chart. Enjoy...