Running a poker home game can seem like a very fun thing to do, and it definitely is, but it is also a task that comes with some challenges.
Whether you are going to be playing for $5 per player or with some serious money on the line, players in the game will want things to run smoothly and for some rules to be in place.
The absence of a good structure in a home game can create chaos and lead to the entire night turning into a disaster, with players getting upset and potentially hurt in a financial sense as well.
If you want to run a good home game, poker chip colors and denominations will be one of your biggest tasks, as making sure this part of the game runs smoothly will set you up for success.
In this article, we are going to teach you how to assign chip values in your home game for both cash games and tournaments, as well as how to make your home game resemble the ones you have seen on TV or at your local casino.
Traditional Cash Game Chip Values
Poker chip colors and values can be different at different venues, but there are also many similarities between the way different poker rooms assign such values.
For instance, black chips are worth 100 in local currency almost everywhere around the world, with very few exceptions.
Across America and Europe, the black chip is worth $100 or €100, and you will find very few poker rooms where this is not the case.
For that reason, you will want to adopt at least some of the traditional cash game chip values when you set up your home game, as this will make things easier for players who have played at other places in the past.
Here is a look at some traditional cash game chip values that you can assign in your home game:
- White Chips: $1
- Red Chips: $5
- Blue Chips: $10
- Green Chips: $25
- Black Chips: $100
- Purple Chips: $500
While many casinos in the world have chips with values of $1,000 and higher, most home games will not need such high-value chips, as the stakes would need to get very high for that to be the case.
If your chips are not marked with numbers, you can always assign any value you want to any of the chips, but remember that using these standardized cash game chip values will make it much easier for players to understand the values.
Running a Cash Game at Home
Now that we have discussed the basic chip colors and values that are commonly used by casinos and poker rooms around the world, it is time to think about setting up a home game of our own.
Assuming you have a chipset with the colors listed above, which most sets include, you can proceed to start setting up the chip stacks for your home game.
If we assume your game is going to have stakes of $1/2 and most players will buyin between $100 and $500, we can start thinking about how to set up their starting stacks to ensure the game runs smoothly.
For starters, players will not need too many $1 chips, as these are mostly used just to cover the blinds in a $1/2 game. However, assigning every player with 20 white chips is a good start to allow for poker straddles, and these chips can always be added to the game if needed.
The red $5 chips are going to make the bulk of all the chips in play, and you can even start by completing every player’s buyin strictly in red chips if you have enough of them.
For instance, a $200 buyin can be made up of 20 white chips worth $20 and 36 red chips worth $180. Players who buyin for more can be given green or black chips over this amount.
The number of red chips you have at your disposal is going to be crucial in a $1/2 game, and if you want the game to keep running smoothly, you want everyone to have plenty of those on hand.
As the night progresses, you can start introducing the bigger chips for rebuys, and players will be able to get change from others at the table without interrupting the game.
Running a Poker Tournament at Home
If you want to run a poker tournament instead of a cash game, you will need to think about a few different things in terms of chip colors and denominations.
To start with, you will need to come up with a tournament structure that makes sense and calculate how the duration of the blind levels will impact the duration of the tournament.
You will want to assess the number of players who might show up to play in your tournament and figure out an appropriate starting stack, blind levels, and level duration to make the tournament enjoyable and fun for everyone.
While you don’t want your tournament to be a super-turbo, you also have to take into account the fact that some people have to wake up early the next morning and can’t play until the late hours of the night.
If you have chips with denominations on them, you will want to set up your tournament in a way where these chips make sense in relation to the starting stack.
For example, if you have chips with denominations of 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, and 500, you will not want to start with 40,000 chip stacks, as that would require way too many of your chips.
Instead, in a case like this, you can start everyone off with 5,000 chips and start the blinds at 10/25, which still means everyone is starting with 200 big blinds.
On the other hand, if you have bigger chips to work with, you can start with a chip stack of 30,000 or 40,000 and make the first level 100/200 or 200/400, depending on how deep you want the tournament to be.
A good way to run your home poker tournament is by giving everyone in play 40,000 in chips in the following denominations (colors are a suggestion):
- 4x 5,000 chips (Orange)
- 15x 1,000 chips (Yellow)
- 6x 500 chips (Blue)
- 20x 100 chips (Black)
If you start the blinds at 100/200, everyone will have plenty of change to post the blinds and plenty of other chips to make raises and play with, while the bulk of their chips will be in the four big 5k chips that will come into play in the big pots and at later levels.
Blind Levels and Chip Ups
If you are setting up a poker tournament for your friends, you will want to make sure to set up the blind levels that make sense in relation to the chip stacks.
For example, if you started a freezeout tournament at 100/200 with 40,000 chips, you will want the blinds to go up every 20 minutes for a faster structure, every 30 minutes for a slower structure, or every 40 minutes for a very slow structure.
Furthermore, you will need to think about whether you want to keep doubling the blinds with every level or if you want to introduce various levels in between the doubles.
One example of a solid tournament structure with 40,000 chips can look like this:
- 100/200
- 100/300
- 200/400
- 300/600
- 400/800
- 500/1,000
- 600/1,200
- 800/1,600
- 1,000/2,000
- 1,500/3,000
- 2,000/4,000
- 2,500/5,000
- 3,000/6,000
- 4,000/8,000
- 5,000/10,000
If we take the example above and assume that a total of 50 entries were made and the blind levels are set at 20 minutes, this means we will have a total of 2,000,000 chips in play, and after 300 minutes of play (5 hours), this will represent 200 big blinds.
That means the tournament will be down to the final table after that time, or very close to it, and this allows you to predict the time at which the tournament will end.
Note that if you set the blinds to 30 minutes, the tournament will only get to level 15 after 7.5 hours, adding significant total running time.
Additionally, you will notice that after level nine, chips with a value of 100 are no longer needed, and they can be completely removed from play.
By doing a chip up and removing these small denomination chips from play, you will speed up the game and allow even more hands to be played at every level.
Assigning Value to Chip Colors in Poker
Different poker chip sets come with chips in different colors, shapes, and sizes. Some chips come with denominations on them, while others are completely blank.
If you have a poker set made up of the latter, you can reasonably assign any value to any chip color you want. As long as you notify the players, the game should run smoothly.
However, the best thing you can do is assign chips with colors that are typically used in casinos and poker rooms, as well as in TV poker games, as this will ensure that players understand the colors from the get-go.
If you happen to be working with a chipset that has chips of different colors, don’t worry about it! Home games are designed to have fun, so as long as you make sure everyone knows some poker basics and what each chip is worth, there should be minimal confusion.
