Tourney How do you stack your chips during a tournament for a quick count? (1 Viewer)

[Preditor]

I'm looking for tips to better stack my chips so I can keep a nice looking stack, but also have a quick count.

In my home game, we have a T10k starting stack with a 12/12/5/6 starting breakdown.

I know the rule of thumb is to keep stacks 20 chips high, but I rarely have 20 of any denomination throughout the night. Especially when the T25s go away and the 5ks are introduced. Sometimes I do a pyramid style with two stacks of 5, and leftovers on in top of them. Sometimes I'll keep a stack of varying denominations in a single stack that equals an even amount (say T20K), and the remainder is what I bet from.

Do you guys have any rules of thumb for stacking your chips at the table?

 

[MrBoosh]

We use pretty much the same starting stacks as you guys. I usually will do ten high most of the time and kind of offset the second row if I start getting a lot of chips. Kind of like this photo.

 

[kmccormick100]

I pretty much always have at least one stack that's 20 high to serve as an easy count/measuring tool. Stacks under that height are easy to count down to, and I'll stack hi denoms on top of one of them. I guess if you don't have many chips in play, stacks of 10 make sense.

 

[oMo]

I prefer Stacks of 10. Like this:

 

[upNdown]

I put them in stacks of
20, or if I don’t have enough they’ll be all together in one or two stacks like a starting stack. I personally find non-20 stacks to be irrationally tilting.
But as far as a quick count goes, I pretty much always know how many chips I have during a tournament. I think it’s kind of important.

 

[JustinInMN]

I like stacks of 20 but as many others have said, often there are circumstances where players won't have 20 of any denom early in a tournament.

The key to quick counting is to always break big stacks down to small stacks of 4 or 5 depending on the denomination you are counting.

Always stack T25 and T500 chips by 4s. (Piles value 100 and 2000 respectively)

Always stack T100 and T1000 by 5s (Piles value 500 and 5000 respectively.

If you get in this habit you will find you can count in your head very quickly, regardless of whether you have enough chips for a full stack of 20.

 

[ArielVer18]

When I have that little chips, I keep a tiny stack of the largest denom chips in front, then one taller stack (up to 50ish, depending on the stability of the table) of the other denoms with betting chips on top and blind chips on the bottom. Keep a running count in my head.

Hard for others players to visually do a quick count, but easy for me to physically count as necessary.

 

[allforcharity]

I always try to stack in 20. This is assuming I have 20 or more of a single denom. Considering my tournament prowess, that would be a bold assumption.

 

[TheRealTeddyKGB]

I pretty much always have at least one stack that's 20 high to serve as an easy count/measuring tool. Stacks under that height are easy to count down to, and I'll stack hi denoms on top of one of them. I guess if you don't have many chips in play, stacks of 10 make sense.

View attachment 1303421
View attachment 1303420

Now you're just showing off!

 

[RichMahogany]

I stack my chips just like I do everything else

 

[OnTheRiver]

I prefer stacks of 10 for sure

 

[Lunettesman]

20 then 10 high stacks. If I can't then I will just make piles of a certain value. Let's say it's 10k tournament buying I might split my chips into 5k stacks.

 

[BGinGA]

Stacks of 10 until I have sufficient chips to make stacks of 20. Unless I'm playing Rob @upNdown, in which case it's stacks of five from start-to-finish.

 

[Frogzilla]

I think there is a recent tda or wsop rule that it must be stacks of 20. It used to just be countable. Never seen it enforced. I have two answers:

1) to estimate your chip count, keep in stacks of 20. Yes I know this means you often have a stack where none are 20, maybe something like 9x 5k, 15x 1k, 5x 500, 11x 100. You should practice recognizing that’s 65ish because you want to better estimate your opponents stacks, and your opponents often keep in stacks of 20.

2) for fun, I like the stacks of 10 in a triangle. Not for count. Just for fun. Also easy to bet with I think.

 

[TheRealTeddyKGB]

 

[MrSonOfABeech]

Nothing to do with chip stacking, but those tire, wheel/tire card protectors are badass!!