Home Poker Tourney Chip Calculator

  

Being a supplier of poker chips we are often asked what a good breakdown is for a poker game. Our immediate response is normally, “it depends”. Is it a cash game or tournament? How many chips do your players like to have in front of them? Do you ever see your stakes rising in the future? How deep do your players get by the end of the night?

The calculator below is designed to formulate an optimal, balanced blind structure for your tournament. It is also built into the Travis Poker Timer software, so you can quickly calculate your perfect blind structure when setting up your tournament. The number of rebuys and add-ons in a tournament also effect the total number of chips in play during a tournament. If no other changes are made, more rebuys and add-ons make for a longer tournament. Blind Level Round Length. Most live tournaments. Total number of physical poker chips to start with: 21 X 20 = 420 poker chips At some point during the tournament the “25” chips will be useless since the blinds will be in even “100’s”. At that point you can. Poker Chip Calculator and Tournament Distribution Poker Chip Set Tournament Number of Players Chip Color Chip Value Number of Chips Total Value Per Player In Play Remaining Chips Value Chips Value Chips Value HomePokerTourney.com. Title: poker-chip-calculator.

Dia de los Muertos poker chips
There are many factors to consider when figuring out a breakdown of chips for your poker game. Make sure to consider them all. Take some time and work out your breakdown in writing so you can visualize the chips being used.
Let’s consider a poker game that is only a tournament. This is the most common type of game that is being played in home games.
Try to not think about just how many “chips” that a player starts with. You can have a player start with 100,000 chips but if the blinds are 1000/2000 in the first level they will have shorter stacks compared to a player that starts with 5000 chips with the first blinds being 25/50. In the first situation the player starts with 50 big blinds while in the second situation the player starts with 100 big blinds. That is a big difference!
So, try to think about how many big blinds (BB) you want each player to start with. A good rule of thumb is that most tournaments start with 50-100 BBs but some players prefer deep-stack tournaments that start with 100+ BBs.
Now, consider how many actual physical chips you want each player to start with. Most players like to have a HUGE stack in front of them, but you have to realize that players need to start with a smaller stack or else you will have to purchase a very large number of chips. In a normal home game tournament players will start with 20-30 chips.
Tournament
Finally, consider how many players you will have in your tournaments and how long the tournament will normally last. If there are a lot of players (20+ players) it will mean that there will be a lot of initial chips on the tables. There will be so many chips that you will have to “color up” the lower denomination chips at some point during the tournament. So, you will need to have higher denomination chips than the initial starting poker chips.
Let’s look at an example set up:
Total players: 20
Starting blinds: 25/50
Starting stack: 5000 (100 BB)
Number of poker chips to start with: 21
Initial chips that each player has in front of them:

  • 4 – “25” chips = 100
  • 9 – “100” chips = 900
  • 8 – “500” chips = 4000

Starting stack of our Nevada Jack Skulls poker chips.

Total number of physical poker chips to start with: 21 X 20 = 420 poker chips
At some point during the tournament the “25” chips will be useless since the blinds will be in even “100’s”. At that point you can “color up” the “25” chips. So, you will need more “100” and possibly more “500” chips. So, it is suggested that another 20 “100” chips be added.
Extra “100” chips for coloring up during the tournament:
  • 20 – “100” chips


This brings the total chips needed for this game to 440 poker chips. At this point it is suggested that extra chips are added for a few reasons. Maybe you will have a game where 22 people show up. Some chips may get lost over time, etc.
Extra chips for special circumstances:
  • 30 – “25” chips
  • 20 – “100” chips
  • 10 – “500” chips


PokerThis brings the total count of chips to:
  • 110 – “25” chips
  • 220 – “100” chips
  • 170 – “500” chips
  • 500 total poker chips


That is a general overview of how to figure out what poker chips to get for a tournament. Let’s discuss a cash game since this will be a bit different.

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Cash Game
It is understood that cash games can vary drastically in stakes. Therefore, let’s not focus on the actual value of the chips but think in terms of big blinds (BB’s). I will discuss a $1/2 NL Holdemgame, but will mention BB’s.
The difference with a cash game is that players are often able to rebuy many times. Also, in many games the buy-in is not capped so a player can typically buy-in for 50 BB’s, 100 BB’s, 200 BB’s, or sometimes much higher. So, by the end of a game the value of chips can far exceed what you start with. However, home cash games generally do not involve more than 10 players.
Let’s consider an uncapped $1/2 NL Holdem game that has unlimited rebuys.
On average, the initial buy-in may be 100 BB’s per player ($200). So, let’s figure out the starting chips for each player:
  • 15 - $1 chips = $15
  • 17 - $5 chips = $85
  • 4 - $25 chips = $100
  • Total – 36 chips = $200

Home Poker Tourney Chip Calculator Game


This brings the total number of chips starting out on the table to 360 poker chips (36 X 10 players).
As mentioned, players will often rebuy (sometimes many times) and players may be allowed to buy-in for more than 100 BB’s. This means we have to consider the extra Resultspoker chips needed for the game.
The starting value of the chips on the table is $2000 (10 players X $200).
During a typical game, the total value chips at the end of the game will be 2-3X the starting value. So, let’s figure out the extra chips needed if the value is up to 3X the starting value:
  • 100 - $5 chips = $500
  • 20 - $25 chips = $500
  • 10 - $100 chips = $1000


This brings the total chips needed to (490 = 360 + 130).
As with the tournament, it is best to add extra chips for the situations where the game gets very deep. You also may want to prepare for if the game grows into a higher stakes game such as $2/5.
Here is a suggestion for extra chips that will cover deep games and slightly higher stakes:
  • 80 - $25 chips = $2000
  • 30 - $100 chips = $3000


Also, consider adding extra poker chips for the occasional lost chip:
  • 50 - $1 chips
  • 50 - $5 chips


As you can see, with the cash game there are more poker chips to purchase. This is often the case, but you are also prepared for a deep game and for future games when the stakes move up. For this situation the total poker chips suggested is (490 + 120 + 100 = 700).
There are no rules regarding the poker chips needed for a game. You may find that your games don’t need as many poker chips or you prefer to have more. The most important thing is to write out what chips you think you need. Try to break down your game like the examples above. It is much better to be prepared before your game starts than to find out that you do not have the poker chips you need to run the game.

The advanced ICM Calculator can be used to determine ICM and chip chop distributions for deals in tournaments and simplifies poker tournament deal negotiations.

Just enter stack sizes and prize money for up to 9 players and hit “Calculate ICM Distribution”. A more detailed description for the ICM Calculator is below.

Stacks and prizes

Stacks
Prizes
Options

Stacks and prizes

Fine Tuning

Raw Output and ICM Results

How to use the advanced ICM Calculator

Enter the Data

We’ll just focus on the Standard Input mode for now:

  • Stack Sizes: Enter the stack sizes for each player, leave fields blank if you’re running a calculation for less than 9 players.
  • Prizes: Enter the prizes for each position. Please only use decimals. Prizes will be sorted descending when calculating.
  • Money set aside: If you want to you can set aside some money which still will be played for after the deal. This amount must be smaller than the difference between 1st and 2nd place.

Once you’re done, hit the button “Calculate ICM Distribution” and the Poker Deal Calculator does it’s magic.

Prize Money Distribution

The ICM calculator shows how much money each player receives according to the Independent Chip Model (or ICM).

It’s also possible to show how much a chip chop deal pays out or even how much a mix of both deals pays out. This can be done via fine tuning. More about fine tuning below.

Below the table is a link (Shareable link to this calculation) which can be used to share this calculation. Any possible fine tuning will be shared as well.

ICM Finish Distribution

The ICM calculator also provides a detailed table which shows how likely it is, each player finishes in any position. This calculation is based purely on ICM and the stack sizes.

Advanced ICM Calculator Options

There are some options that make this ICM Deal Calculator stand out a bit. Let’s go through them.

Advanced Input

The Advanced Input doesn’t look very advanced, it’s just a text box. But copy-pasting chip counts and prizes from other sources is sometimes easier than manually entering all the information.

  • Stack Sizes: The advanced input scans the first lines until the first blank line for stack sizes. It also supports player names. Just use the format “name stack-size”. If you don’t use a name, the calculator will assign the usual “Player x” names.
  • Prizes: After the first blank line the advanced input scans for prizes until the next blank line.
  • Options: Below that are options – all of which can be set when fine tuning (see below). Meaning: don’t adjust these options here.

Fine Tuning

When you tick the checkbox “Fine tune results” you get a set of options to adjust the results of the calculation. Those are the options:

  • Allow chip chop excess: When calculating chip chop deals (see below) there can be rare occurrences where the deal allots more money to first place then the payouts would. This happens when there is a single huge chip leader. Default option for this calculator is to not allow such a deal. This calculator redistributes any excess allotments proportionally between the other players. If the checkbox is ticked, deals which allow more than first place money for any player are possible.
  • Round results: You can choose to round the results to the nearest multiple of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 or 1,000. If the sum of the rounded payouts doesn’t equal the sum of prizes, the rounding error will be added or deducted to or from the player where the error has the least impact.
  • ICM or Chip-Chop: By default the calculator provides a pure ICM deal. But it’s also possible to calculate a chip chop deal (just move the slider to the far right). It is also possible to calculate a weighted average of both deals. Since ICM deals usually favor short stacks and chip chop deals favor big stacks, sometimes it might be a good idea, to mix both deals. But in general chip chop deals are a rather bad idea for almost all players involved.

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Fine tuning the individual payouts

When fine tuning is enabled you’ll see pluses and minuses pop up in the prize money distribution table. With those buttons you can manually adjust the payouts for each player.

Clicking plus or minus adjusts the payout for the player by (very roughly) 1 percent. In return the payout for each other player is adjusted accordingly, so that the sum of the payouts always stays the same.

You can use this option, when one player wants at least so and so much when negotiating a deal. When negotiating a deal online you use the shareable link option to send other players a link to the specific adjustment.

Question, remarks, suggestions, bugs? Please leave a comment below!

Relevant Resources

  • What is ICM? A detailed explanation of ICM.
  • Independent Chip Model on Wikipedia
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Home Poker Tourney Chip Calculator