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Poker Chips Buying Guide

Buy Samples

This guide is a great start to buying a great poker set. But rule #1 is that you NEED to buy samples of poker chips you are considering so that you can evaluate them yourself. Most retailers will sell sample sets ranging from a few dollars and up depending on the chips. Some (pokerchips.com) will even send you a couple for free if you ask. This is the most important advice you can be given. Do not be afraid to order lots of different samples. Then once you get them, play with them! Shuffle them and riffle them so you can really get a feel for them. Examine the quality. They are going to be your chips so you better use the sample to determine if you really like the chips. If you are brave, do some damage tests. Try to break one with your hands or by dropping it on a hard floor.

Types of Poker Chips

Compression Molded (Clay) Poker Chips - These are what everyone refers to as clay poker chips and you will probably find them in your favorite casino. These chips feature beautiful multi colored edge spots, inlays, sometimes custom molds, and bright colors. While the chips are not made of pure clay like some may claim, they are high quality chips made using a time intensive process. Paulson is the leader in clay casino poker chips while ASM and Blue Chip are popular manufacturers of custom clay poker chips for the home market.

Ceramic Poker Chips - Ceramic chips are actually injection molded blank white chips that are printed on with specialty printers and heat presses to imbed the full color graphics into the chip. These are becoming more popular in casinos because of the ability to add graphics across the entire face of the chips and the edges. Chipco is the ceramic casino chip leader and there are several chip manufacturers/printers that print custom chips for the home market.

Injection Molded Composite Poker Chips - I categorize including clay feel chips, abs chips, plastic chips, composite clay chips, and anything similar into the this category. These chips are the most popular for budget minded people and the quality is usually subpar. Most composite chips have a metal insert (but not all) for added weight and then are injected with a plastic or composite covering with the designs printed over that. The main distinction is that these are injection molded and you can usually tell they look much cheaper than compression molded (clay) chips. Some designs have labels or inlays added to them or you can have them hot stamped. These still represent a good value but are not casino quality chips no matter what the retailer tries to get you to believe. Some are definitely better quality than others so get samples before you buy so you can be the judge.

Plastic Poker Chips - Think of those interlocking white, red, blue chips that most everyone has somewhere in a game closet. Not much needs to be said about these other than....get some better chips!

Poker Chip Weight

There is mass confusion in the poker chip market over poker chip weight. Much of this confusion is accredited to the plastic chip retailers marketing 11.5 gram chips as "official casino weight" poker chips. There is also the belief that heavier poker chips are better quality. These ideas could not be further from the truth. The majority of casino poker chips including clay poker chips made by Paulson and ceramic poker chips made by Chipco are in the 9-10 gram range. Some chips like those made by Bud Jones are in the 12 gram range and are plastic but for the must part, 9-10 grams seems to be the weight of most casino chips out there. That being said, do not let retailers fool you. There is no such thing as official casino weight chips. Heavier chips also do not mean better chips. It simply means they might have a heavier metal insert, which, by the way, most casino chips do not have.

Standard Poker Chip Colors and Denominations

While casinos are open to use whatever colors they like, these are the accepted standard poker chip colors and denominations. Other denominations such as $2, $2.50, $3, $10, etc. vary greatly from casino to casino.

$1 - White or Blue
$5 - Red (Yellow in California Casinos)
$25 - Green
$100 - Black
$500 - Purple
$1000 - Yellow or Orange

Configuring Your Poker Chip Set

In general, when choosing a poker chip set, before you go and buy a set that has 25 cent chips and $1000 chips in the same set, you should ask yourself what types of poker games do I play and then configure your set based around that style. There are two styles of games that will play a large part in deciding what poker chips to buy: Cash Games and Tournaments.

Cash Games are poker games where the chips used actually represent money. For example, You buy into a game for $20 and are given $20 worth of chips. For cash style poker games, you are generally going to stick to lower denominations and more chips in each denomination. An example for a great cash game setup would be 25cent, $1, $5, and $20 chips. Depending on the stakes you play you want to select 3-4 denominations with the majority of your chips in the lower denominations. A $20 chip is very popular in cash games to use as a rebuy chip where a player buying back in is given one $20 chip that they can change amongst the others. This avoids having to stop play to count out chips for the rebuy. You want to have enough larger denomination chips to cover the stakes you are playing. If you play 25c/50c (Small/Big Blind) No Limit Hold'em (NLHE), you should get the most 25 cent and $1 chips as those will likely be used the most, but you also need a decent amount of $5 chips. If you play 50c/$1 NLHE, obviously you should probably stick with 50 cent chips instead of 25 cent chips and possibly get some more $5 chips since the stakes are higher.

Tournaments are a different beast altogether. Poker tournaments are games where all the players buy in for a certain amount, say $20, and are given a specified value of tournament chips, say 1000. The main difference is that the chips do not represent the actual cash. Instead the winner, or winners, of all the chips are awarded the money in the pot for winning the tournament. Tournament setups vary depending on how many people you are hosting. In general, 4 denominations should be plenty. For tournament setups, you should get the majority of your chips in the lower 2 denominations and probably more chips in the 2nd denomination. If you are hosting a large tournament or have increasing blinds, a color-up is usually done where the lowest value chips are colored-up to higher value chips when they are no longer needed. This is why your 2nd denomination in the set is actually the main workhorse of the set. The most popular tournament denominations seem to be 25, 100, 500, and 1000. A setup with these denominations should meet your needs just fine. However this can be adjusted to your tastes. For instance, a setup of 5, 25, 100, 500 OR 100, 500, 1000, 5000 are just as good. So make sure about 65-75% of your chips are in the lower 2 denominations with a good amount also in the 3rd denomination. A setup of 500 chips could follow the following guide: 35% (denom 1), 35% (denom 2), 20% (denom 3), 10% (denom 4). This is just a guide and can be varied to your own needs.

How Many Chips to Buy

This can vary depending on how you will be using the chips and how many players will be playing in your poker games. The majority of poker chip sets are between 500 and 1000 chips because of the case sizes. However, here are some recommendations on how many chips to buy:

• 4-6 Players = 300-500 Poker Chips
• 6-8 Players = 500-650 Poker Chips
• 8-10 Players = 650-750 Poker Chips
• 10+ Players = 750-1000 Poker Chips

Buying Custom Poker Chips

The type of poker set you buy also depends on your need to have the chips customized. Custom chips provide greater security because no one can sneak them into your game. There are a number of ways to customize chips. If you buy blank poker chips, you can usually have them hot stamped or add your own custom labels to the chips if there is a recessed center in the chip. Nexgen chips are popular for this type of customization. Custom ceramic poker chips are also available where you can design your own chips and have them printed for you. The last and probably best option is having custom clay poker chips made by pokerchips.com (ASM) or the Blue Chip Company.

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