Newb here - Chips walked away from an18 year long weekly (1 Viewer)

[VivasTable]

A bit overwhelmed lurking around here but I'm an overthinker when it comes to buying something that's more than $20 and surrounded by opinions, so forums are generally a good place to go rabbit hole diving.

I'll be looking for a low stakes cash game set and possibly a tourni set at some point.

Our OG host moved the game to the garage at the start of the pandemic and eventually ended up cancelling this 18 year old, weekly, Thursday night poker game.
Needless to say he took the Nevada Jacks with him and we've been using some garbage, cobbled up walmart type sets ever since.

It's a bit of a traveling game now but we have a set of 3 guys hosting regularly and I've added myself into the rotation (Wife approved, YES!! ).

I'm not in this deep (yet?) but could be opening a pandoras box. They call me "All In" and it has nothing to do with Poker LMAO.

So, I'll be lurking some more, reading up. LIkely buying up a couple used sets, sample sets and whatnot but I've got my eye on a couple things and I had to make a few posts to get ma posting privileges.

-Viva

 

[VivasTable]

I suppose I should have said Hello to the group. Hi everybody!!

 

[TheOffalo]

Welcome! I was using dice chips until just last fall, and now I have a 1000+ of each kind of the following chips: spirit mold china clay chips, 8V china clay chips, and cards mold ceramics, and 800ish Paulson chips from closed or rebranded casinos. The rabbit hole is real, but there's a huge range of options of various affordability.

How many players do you usually have on poker nights and what stakes do you play?

 

[VivasTable]

Welcome! I was using dice chips until just last fall, and now I have a 1000+ of each kind of the following chips: spirit mold china clay chips, 8V china clay chips, and cards mold ceramics, and 800ish Paulson chips from closed or rebranded casinos. The rabbit hole is real, but there's a huge range of options of various affordability.

How many players do you usually have on poker nights and what stakes do you play?

I'm apologizing in advance if what I say too much, or leaving something out. Or sound crazy haha

Typically the regulars 7-9 guys most weeks but we get to 12-15 sometimes on 2 tables if someone is smoking a brisket ha. Measly $20 buy-in No limit texas Tourni. Rebuys are kind of fluid but over at end of 3rd/4th blind raise usually. Two tables pays out 3rd place for original buy in. Top two usually negotiate based on chipstack (not often played out, game starts late evening). We currently get $1300 in chips. 5's, 25's, 50's (we use white $1 chips at the moment for this) $100, $500. Blinds start at 10/20 but I'd prefer to eliminate it and start at 25/50 and add 400/800 to the top or 500/1000 (300/600 current max auto blind raise)

I was thinking of getting a set with 25, 100, 500, 1000 ceramic and starting everyone with $2000 in chips. Divisble by 100 so it plays like cents. Does that make sense? Or a small denom set with quarters, 50c, $1, $5 to basically do the same thing. So it's face value at the end of the day. We have had a rare $50 buy in so with the regular chips we could just use the larger denom chips. I'm stuck. Maybe I just get 3 sets hahaha

 

[allforcharity]

Hello and welcome!

For most tourneys, 2 full tables (10 each) can be done with 600-800 chips easy, rebuys and all.

T5 base T2K tourney gives you 200BB stacks. If you must convert these to cash, dividing by 100 will give you nickels through $5s and $10s for reloads.
I would prefer a separate cash and tourney set, myself, in the denoms that you actually use, without multipliers.

 

[TheOffalo]

Sounds like you do tournaments with blind raises, but you play for face value. Nothing wrong with that, but tournaments are when you can pretend to be high rollers. If you do top 2-3 payouts and people never try to "cash out" their tournament chips before it's over (I've read some people run hybrid tournament/cash--not my bag but if it works for them...), then why not put the higher denoms into play and not worry about face value?

Also gives you an excuse to have a tournament set and a cash set that's not intermingled, if you do play cash sometimes.

 

[RolloPollo]

Welcome

 

[BlueChipSpecial]

Welcome! Lots of great advice to get you sorted out here!

 

[Ben8257]

Welcome @VivasTable , tournies can be run with all types of structures but typically we base them off of the # of big Blinds. You mentioned moving up to a T25 base chip which means first level would be 25/50 likely. You also mentioned 2,000 in starting stacks, that is only 40BBs, I guess if the general idea is lots of rebuys then run your game but generally the lowest #BBs I have seen in any tourney structure is 100BB (or 5,000 in chips), and what I would call standard is 200 BB (or 10,000 in chips)

So if you do decide to move to a T25 base chip I would personally recommend moving up your starting stacks, with only 40BBs this is destined to be somewhat of a shove fest. Personally I would move the buy in up to say (include the first rebuy or $40 in your game) and start with larger starting stacks.

Also when it comes to cash time after the tourney, right now you guys are getting by with Wally World chips, moving up to denominated is an awesome step and absolutely you can use a multiplier where the T25 is played as your quarter, or even T5 as a nickle.

Nevada Jacks are not something super rare, pretty sure you can order those or several other designs from @BR Pro Poker a site vendor here on the forum, but she is on vacation. But if going with standard (not semi custom) chips then you can order directly from their website. Usually we say get samples but you guys have plenty of expeon the Nevada Jacks and they are made on the same blanks as their other options if you choose to buy something different.

Careful, as you mentioned chipping can become one hell of a rabbit hole to fall down. That first set of beautiful chips hits the door step, you open them up and often within 10 minutes you find yourself looking for more... if that urge hits you I recommend throwing your phone in the furthest, darkest comes of your basement. Run back upstairs, lock the door and go get a new phone and forget PCF ever existed! You likely will not follow that bit of advice so we will see you right back here looking for more, and it's OK it happens to all of us.

Atleast you are in good company, many of us have already had to come up with 1000 excuses for the wife on why packages keep showing up with poker chips in them, and why that account that was supposed to be the kiddos college fund has been on a sharp decline as of late. You don't have to go at this alone... I'm sure many are willing to share their excuses and what worked and what miserably failed! Lmao

Either way, enjoy your chipping journey!
Fellow Chipper Ben

 

[VivasTable]

Started with a used frac set of Apache Banks from this site. They came in today and I've peeled off 400 labels so far, only 800 more to go. My thumbnail is pissed, is there a better way?

 

[VivasTable]

Welcome @VivasTable , tournies can be run with all types of structures but typically we base them off of the # of big Blinds. You mentioned moving up to a T25 base chip which means first level would be 25/50 likely. You also mentioned 2,000 in starting stacks, that is only 40BBs, I guess if the general idea is lots of rebuys then run your game but generally the lowest #BBs I have seen in any tourney structure is 100BB (or 5,000 in chips), and what I would call standard is 200 BB (or 10,000 in chips)

So if you do decide to move to a T25 base chip I would personally recommend moving up your starting stacks, with only 40BBs this is destined to be somewhat of a shove fest. Personally I would move the buy in up to say (include the first rebuy or $40 in your game) and start with larger starting stacks.

Also when it comes to cash time after the tourney, right now you guys are getting by with Wally World chips, moving up to denominated is an awesome step and absolutely you can use a multiplier where the T25 is played as your quarter, or even T5 as a nickle.

Nevada Jacks are not something super rare, pretty sure you can order those or several other designs from @BR Pro Poker a site vendor here on the forum, but she is on vacation. But if going with standard (not semi custom) chips then you can order directly from their website. Usually we say get samples but you guys have plenty of expeon the Nevada Jacks and they are made on the same blanks as their other options if you choose to buy something different.

Careful, as you mentioned chipping can become one hell of a rabbit hole to fall down. That first set of beautiful chips hits the door step, you open them up and often within 10 minutes you find yourself looking for more... if that urge hits you I recommend throwing your phone in the furthest, darkest comes of your basement. Run back upstairs, lock the door and go get a new phone and forget PCF ever existed! You likely will not follow that bit of advice so we will see you right back here looking for more, and it's OK it happens to all of us.

Atleast you are in good company, many of us have already had to come up with 1000 excuses for the wife on why packages keep showing up with poker chips in them, and why that account that was supposed to be the kiddos college fund has been on a sharp decline as of late. You don't have to go at this alone... I'm sure many are willing to share their excuses and what worked and what miserably failed! Lmao

Either way, enjoy your chipping journey!
Fellow Chipper Ben

Thanks Ben, this all makes a ton of sense it's getting the group to agree to changes is the biggest challenge. I've already started by introducing a $5 bounty to get some more cash in the game which seems to be well received but pushing the game up to $40 and we would lose players, despite allowing rebuys and the guys that would leave rebuy all the time, lmao go figure. Even pushing it up to $25 buy in had some guys complaining on nights when we had 2 tables and 15 players. I'm having fun on here looking and after getting my first mailday today, I'm on here again "just browsing" haha

Thanks again

Shawn

 

[elfmag]

Welcome! I am currently in the process of convincing my group to upgrade AWAY from dice chips. I figure if our game ever ends outright either someone can buy the chips from everyone else or we can sell the chips and split the returns. Never really thought about it until now though. Hopefully the game never ends, we never die, and the chips play for all time!

 

[VivasTable]

Welcome! I am currently in the process of convincing my group to upgrade AWAY from dice chips. I figure if our game ever ends outright either someone can buy the chips from everyone else or we can sell the chips and split the returns. Never really thought about it until now though. Hopefully the game never ends, we never die, and the chips play for all time!

I sent a pic of my 200 Pink Apache Banks i just got today and one buddy called them easter chips. I honestly don't care, I'll be forcing some new chips on the group once i get them relabled. Im done with the dice chips at least on my table

 

[BigSlick4523]

Hello and welcome fellow Michigander I just joined a new League this year that has been running for 13 years now we start with 6k in chips blinds start at 25/50 and blinds go up every 20mins

there is 27 people in our league and its cool at first but once blinds start to raise and people tank for a couple mins each hand sometimes you will only see like 4-5 hands per 20 mins and they won't use 2 decks so it can suck sometimes later on in the tourney it becomes a all in fest

anyways when I ran tourneys back in the day like 2004-2008ish we went off of WSOP Main Event when they started with 10k stacks

we would start blinds and 100/100 or 100/200 & we just used 100,500 & 1k chips

I wish my league would just start everyone with 10k instead of 6k and do away with the $25 chips and just start blinds at 100/100 or 100/200

they were using Dice Chips and I ended up just getting us some Showdown Poker Chips very cheap but not bad compared to dice chips

you can get a 1,000pc set for around $250ish give or take

also have you ever used 100% Plastic Cards ? makes a world of difference

PM me if you have or ever have any questions we are all here to help

 

[VivasTable]

Hello and welcome fellow Michigander I just joined a new League this year that has been running for 13 years now we start with 6k in chips blinds start at 25/50 and blinds go up every 20mins

there is 27 people in our league and its cool at first but once blinds start to raise and people tank for a couple mins each hand sometimes you will only see like 4-5 hands per 20 mins and they won't use 2 decks so it can suck sometimes later on in the tourney it becomes a all in fest

anyways when I ran tourneys back in the day like 2004-2008ish we went off of WSOP Main Event when they started with 10k stacks

we would start blinds and 100/100 or 100/200 & we just used 100,500 & 1k chips

I wish my league would just start everyone with 10k instead of 6k and do away with the $25 chips and just start blinds at 100/100 or 100/200

they were using Dice Chips and I ended up just getting us some Showdown Poker Chips very cheap but not bad compared to dice chips

you can get a 1,000pc set for around $250ish give or take

also have you ever used 100% Plastic Cards ? makes a world of difference

PM me if you have or ever have any questions we are all here to help

Hey BigSlick, thanks for the welcome! Hoping mother nature turns the heat on us soon, I'm ready for some golf haha. Your game sounds a lot like ours other than the size. The core 9/10 guys go way back to H.S. some 25+ years so it's a friendly game with tons of story's, paused or between blind "smoke breaks" haha. It does become a push fest some nights. It really depends on mood/fun factor I suppose. You would think the host most nights could wait it out but ends up getting bombed. I honestly don't even feel comfortable playing outside of our home game yet and I've been playing for 12 years just about every Thursday. Do you think that's bizarre? LMAO I can't be the only one. I suppose another private game somewhere would be ok but the casino poker rooms freak me out. Craps is where it's at though if I'm at a casino for sure.

 

[Phish1321]

Hello and welcome

 

[opengun]

I run a 10 player 3.5 hours weekly tournament with a $7k starting stack with blinds starting at 25/50. It runs well with 2-4 rebuys at $5k in the 3.5 hour time. lots of Michiganders on here.

 

[VivasTable]

I run a 10 player 3.5 hours weekly tournament with a $7k starting stack with blinds starting at 25/50. It runs well with 2-4 rebuys at $5k in the 3.5 hour time. lots of Michiganders on here.

I think that's about right for our group as well. So what deniminations are you all using for this game with this setup?

 

[VivasTable]

Hello and welcome

Thakn you for the welcome!

 

[opengun]

I’m using 25/100/500/1000 and the occasional 5000 but not needed.

 

[elfmag]

I sent a pic of my 200 Pink Apache Banks i just got today and one buddy called them easter chips. I honestly don't care, I'll be forcing some new chips on the group once i get them relabled. Im done with the dice chips at least on my table

Same. I die a little inside each time I have to use dice chips.