Poker Chips Value Chart

For poker players, the old days are the glory days—when players tossed expensive, monogrammed chips into the pot, passed around a box of fine cigars, and relaxed at their private casino table while waiting for a fellow magnate to bid or fold. Well, maybe that wasn't us, but we can still enjoy some the vintage poker chips. Poker Chip Colors and Values. When buying poker chips without denominations, we get asked what colors are for what value. Technically speaking, any color can stand for any value, as long as it is defined ahead of time and everybody playing knows what color is what value.

Dart World Poker Chips Value Chart
Poker Chip Value Chart
Poker Chip Value Guide
Standard Poker Chip Values
Texas Holdem Chip Value

For those unfamiliar with poker rules and the game of Poker, along with others who might want a refresher, this is the most basic of basic poker. The various games are based on this.

Poker is a game of five card hands dealt from a 52 card deck of standard playing cards. All poker hands consist of exactly five cards. Most games, like seven card stud for example, give the players more than five cards to select from, but the final winning result goes to the one with the best five card poker hand. In the popular stud poker games, the players are all dealt one card at a time or in small groups and they bet money each time they get more cards. They bet that they will end up with the best hand. The players that don't want to bet on their hands any longer can 'fold' their hands, get out of the contest and forfeit all the bets they have made to that point. At the end, the player with the best poker hand wins all the bets. In draw poker the players bet, then replace the cards they don't like with new ones from the dealer and then bet again.

The best hand is determined by the Poker Hand Ranking chart below.

Mobile Users - I've created a special chart in universal .pdf format for easy viewing on narrow screens. The original large chart is also available for downloading, viewing or printing.

Mobile - hand-rankings-mobile.pdf
Tablet / Desktop - hand-rankings.pdf

Rules for the More Popular Poker Games

Basic Poker Resources

Poker Terms - Before sitting down at a poker table, new players should check out my glossary and get familiar with some of the poker lingo.

Can you name thesePoker Legends?

In 1978, Doyle Brunson, two time winner of the 'World Championship of Poker' at Binions Horseshoe in Las Vegas, published probably the best ever written book on casino level poker games. This 600 page, 3 lb. volume is more like an encyclopedia reference than a typical poker book. The work is packed with sound professional advice with volumes of stats for advanced players and was strangely named 'How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker'. In reprint, it is now named 'Super System'.

For this classic, Brunson enlisted the services of some of the best professional poker players in the world, all champions in their own right, to collaborate the authoring of the game sections of their particular specialties. The cartoon of this world class poker game is shown on the books inside front cover. Here are the players and their game contributions.

1. DOYLE BRUNSON - No Limit Hold'em 2. MIKE CARO - Draw Poker 3. JOEY HAWTHORN - Five and Seven Card Lowball 4. DAVID SKLANSKY - Seven Card Stud, High-Low Split 5. CHIP REESE - Seven Card Stud 6. BOBBY BALDWIN - Limit Hold'em

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?

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: Chart

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

This 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.
Cash Game

Dart World Poker Chips Value Chart

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

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 poker 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:

Poker Chip Value Chart

Poker Chip Value Guide

50 - $1 chips
50 - $5 chips

Standard Poker Chip Values

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).

Texas Holdem Chip Value

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.