Home Poker: How do you work blinds and chip distribution?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Lately, we’ve gotten into having friends over for various game nights. Poker seems to be a preferred choice.

The first time we tried it, we played two games, which were pretty disastrous in figuring out how we should arrange blinds/increases, and with how many chips (and of which denominations) we should start (not to mention trading in the small value chips later in the game).

Because everybody knows it (usually badly) at this point, we typically just play Hold Em. To give it a nice end-game, we have been playing tournament chips, with no re-buy.

So for the dopers who play at home:

  1. How do you work blind schedules? By time, or by number of hands? And for either choice, how often do you increase?

  2. How do you do chip distribution? Right now, we have five colors, with 50 of each color, except for one color that is 100 chips. We’re expecting a larger group tomorrow than the last time, and are probably going to buy another 300-piece set of the same chips, doubling our supply. What denominations should we make each chip, and what distribution of those chips should we offer at the beginning of the game?

2

Each person should start out with 100 chips, and you should start with 1/2 blinds. Every chip is worth “1” regardless of color.

When you want to raise the blinds, you can either double them - or just take half of everybody’s chips.

I’d suggest doing it after half the players are gone. When there’s two players left, you should probably double the blinds again, if only because there’s going to be a lot of bored people standing around at that point.

3

PS Anybody want a peanut?

4

This site has a number of excellent charts for how set up blind structures and chip counts. Unless you’re going over 20 players in a tourney, there’s not much point in having more than 3 different colours of chips out there. Especially with beginners, it tends to be confusing. You can always add in a fourth colour towards the end if the stacks get unwieldy. I would also suggest time as a better blind marker than hands, going up every 20 minutes or so.

5

Looks like tomorrow’s going to be somewhere between six and eight, up from four players last time. We went with four colors, which I believe we designated values of 1, 5, 20 and 50. (or was it five colors we used, with 1, 5, 20, 50, and 100?)

6

Depends on how you play. If everyone plays pretty conservatively and your tourneys tends to run long, you should probably schedule your blinds to increase based on the clock. Every 20 or 30 minutes makes a good pace. They should double every step.

In my group of friends we tend to play fairly aggressively when playing small stakes. As a result players get eliminated at a fairly brisk pace and it tends to be easier to raise the blinds every time a player gets eliminated. This has a side benefit of coinciding with the larger stacks that logically build as people are eliminated.

As for chip distribution. I always vote for fewer chips. Some people feel the need to split up all the chips they have and everyone ends up with a giant stack of white “$1” chips which become an after thought after the blinds increase and everyone begins betting in increments of $5. You’d be better off either making all chips regardless of color worth a vague “one” or making the biggest chip worth no more than 10 times the smallest one. You should really only need enough “ones” to make change for the larger chips and pay the blinds.

7

I think that’s WAY to many denominations for a game that small. What value does a 1 have when there are 50 and 100 chips in play? If you are starting with a 1/2 blind structure those blinds amount for probably less than 0.25% of your total stack, and that’s just too small an amount.

With 8 players I’d strongly consider splitting 200 of your 300 chips up into 8 stacks of 25 chips each worth “1” and then take 40 of the remaining 100 white chips and give everyone 5 each and have them worth “5”. That way each player has the equivalent of 50 chips. With that stack a 1/2 blind to start would be a good proportion and would have the intended effect of making people consider paying to see the flop or not. If the blinds are any cheaper relative to each players total stack then it’s simply too cheap to hang around to see the the flop. As a result you’re probably going to have dozens and dozens of hands where you have 6 or 7 players still in after the flop. That’s just not how the game is intended to play.

Worst case scenario the game wraps up in an hour and a half and you end up playing twice.

8

**When the total number of chips in the tournament is about 40x the big blind, the tourney is about to end.
**
That single statement drives everything. Decide how many players you have and how many to chips you’re giving to each. It doesn’t matter what you decide. Say N players and C chips. Then there are NC total chips in the game. Make up a blind schedule such that the blinds reach NC/40 at the time you want everyone to go home.

Example: 7pm to 10pm desired. 10 players, 2000 chips = 20000 chips to start. Tourney will end near or before the round with BB=NC/40=500. So, set the ending round:

7:00 BB=?
10:00 BB=500

For the beginning round, decide how you want people to drop away: quickly at first, then slowly ==> bigger starting blinds (~C/25). Slowly at first, then more quickly ==> smaller starting blinds (~C/200). Let’s say you pick C/100. Then:

7:00 BB=20
10:00 BB=500

Use the clock for rounds. Say you want blinds to increase every 30 minutes. (Doesn’t matter much.) With the first and (estimated) last rounds set, just fill in the middle!

7:00 20
7:30 40
8:00 80
8:30 100
9:00 200
9:30 400
10:00 500
(small blinds ~1/2 the BB. Doesn’t have to be exact, e.g. SB=50,BB=75 is perfectly fine.)

Adjust the middle numbers to suit your desires according to the following corollary: If the average stack size is below 20BB, the field will thin itself imminently. Notice that in the above tourney, the (constant!) total chip count is 20000. Thus, until a player gets eliminated, the average stack size goes: (1) 100BB (2) 50BB (3) 25BB. Thus, expect to be down to 9 players sometime around round (3), certainly no later than. If that’s too soon/late for you, adjust the blinds down/up for the preceding rounds, but you have to keep the 10:00 round frozen because that sets the end time (following the bolded rule at the top.)

That’s how you tune a tourney. YMMV.

One last thing: Two or three chip colors is plenty. 25/100/500 is reasonable. (The above example used units of 20, in which case you’d use 20/100/500.) For a 2000 chips tourney, you might give everyone 1x500, 3x100, 8x25. If you have enough to keep to two colors, even better until later in the tournament.

On edit: obviously the overall chip scale is arbitrary. You could take the entire above post and divide by 20. Thus, give everyone 200 chips and the blinds start at 1 unit and reach 50 units at 10:00. Whatever you’re comfortable with.

9

We don’t do blinds. Everybody antes, it makes life a lot easier.

And we use 4 colors: white=1, red=5, blue=10, yellow=25. Cents, that is - we play penny-ante. Everybody buys in for $2.00: 4 yellow, 6 each blue and red, 10 white. You can buy more chips at any time.