Blind structure for a fast tournament Participants: 10 Duration: about 1.75 hours Starting stack: 2,000 Chips 1 x 500 Chip 12 x 100 Chips 12 x 25 Chips The blind levels: Level Small Blind Big Blind Time 1 25 50 00:15 2 50 100 00:30 3 75 150 00:45 4 100 200 01:00 5 200 400 01:15 6 400 800 01:30 7 800 1,600 01:45.

1. Texas Holdem Poker Chip Values
2. Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values List
3. Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values Price Guide
4. Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values Cheat
5. Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values Chart

Chips used for poker are among the most iconic parts of gambling overall. One complete basic set of poker chips usually consists of red, white, blue, green, and black chips. In addition, other larger high stakes tournaments also use other chipsets with more colors. For the most popular types of games like Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, or any other that uses chips as currency, you simply have to know how much each color is worth. It is important to remember that no set rules are in place for the values and that these are rather are common standards at poker events. In this article, we will go over the usual ways poker chips are valued during games.

Basic Poker Chips

• Understanding M and Q in Tournament Play. Compared to cash games, tournament holdem poker is notably different by the fact that you need to increase your stack in order to survive, whilst in cash games if you maintain a constant stack for hours, you are not winning but you are not losing either.
• The need for ICM stems from a non-linear value of tournament chips. In all SNGs that are not winner-take-all, or in the heads-up stage, the chips that you risk will be of a lesser value than the chips you stand to gain. For example, in a 6-man $20 SNG, with prizes of $84 for first place, and $36 for second place, you start with 1500 chips worth.

White – $1

Pink – $2.50 (This is rare in poker, and it is sometimes used in black-jack)

Red – $5

Blue – $10

Green – $25

Black – $100

Full Poker Chips

White – $1

Yellow – $2 (Again, rarely used)

Red – $5

Blue – $10

Grey – $20 (Sometimes green)

Green – $25

Orange – $50

Texas Holdem Poker Chip Values

Black – $100

Pink – $250

Purple – $500

Yellow – $1000 (These are sometimes burgundy or gray)

Light Blue – $2000

Brown – $5000

Are You Hosting a Poker Event?

If you want to host a game of poker with a maximum of 10 players, the experts suggest you should have around 500 chips in three or four colors. If you plan to hold a much larger game with up to 30 people, an around 1,000 chips in four or five colors is what you will need. Regarding sets of chips for your own games, you should keep the number of different colors low and have the most chips of the lowest value. Then, you should have progressively smaller numbers of chips as they climb in value. One example of this is a 4:3:2:1 ratio for $1, $5, $10, and $25 chips. For 500 poker chips, totals of 200, 150, 100, and 50 chips in white, red, blue and green is the common practice.

Casino Chips

Casinos tend to have their own custom-designed chips that have monetary value and the name of the casino printed either printed or engraved on the sides. These are also often multi-colored, stylized, and have patterns. The color-coding in the casinos often follows the values listed above, but many casinos make up their own systems.

Atlanta casinos mostly follow the basic practice of white, pink, red, green, and black chips. They also add yellow chips for $20 and blue chips for $10.

Las Vegas casinos are arguably the most popular in the world, and they also follow the primary system. They too, however, add $20 chips. The Wynn casino also has brown $2 chips and peach $3 chips.

California has no legal laws for chip colors in California, but a common color coding method is as follows:

$1 is usually blue

$2 is green

$3 is red

$5 is yellow

$10 is brown

$20 is black

$25 is purple

$100 is white and sometimes larger

$500 is brown or gray and often larger

High-Value Chips

Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values List

A chip that is worth more than $5,000 is rarely available at the public in casinos, because high-stakes games are mostly held privately. At these events, casinos sometimes use rectangular plaques that are around the same size as playing cards. Casinos that allow high-stakes gambling in public areas have plaques of $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, and even higher. Only Nevada and Atlantic City have these casinos.

This all will be unnecessary if you are going to an online casino because the chips are already counted for you. However, not all online casinos are user friendly, to say it like this. Some of them have the Gamstop tool that prevents players with gambling issues to approach the site. To avoid such sites, you can check the list of non Gamstop casinos at sites such as freespins.monster.

History

Most of the gambling games through history used some sort of cash marker for the currency. However, the first use of chips dates back at the early 1800s when the saloons and gaming houses in the Wild West started using engraved bones, ivory, or clay as chips. These were quite easy to copy however, so by the 1880s, several commercial companies manufactured customized clay chips for the use in saloons and gaming houses. They were carefully detailed and hard to forge.

In contemporary casinos, chips are custom and manufactured, still containing a percentage of clay. Some can also be ceramic. The weight, texture, design, and color are carefully observed and controlled, and some high-end casinos even have microchips in them, which means they are impossible to copy.

Independent Chip Modeling (ICM) determines your equity share of the prize pool in a tournament based on the stack sizes of the remaining opponents and the probability of your finish. With these probabilities, a dollar value can be associated with your stack size.

ICM is usually much more prevalent in SNGs, but can also apply when there are large payout jumps at the final table of a tournament. Most experienced SNG players are very familiar with ICM and it’s use, but may not understand the mechanics behind it, or how to calculate it by hand.

The need for ICM stems from a non-linear value of tournament chips. In all SNGs that are not winner-take-all, or in the heads-up stage, the chips that you risk will be of a lesser value than the chips you stand to gain.

For example, in a 6-man $20 SNG, with prizes of $84 for first place, and $36 for second place, you start with 1500 chips worth $20. If you win you’ll finish with 6 times as many chips as you started with (9000), which are worth 4.2 times as much money as you started with ($84). That may not seem fair, but all of the prize money is distributed at the end, so if you know how to use ICM as a weapon, you will end up with the lion’s share of the prize pool much more often than 1 in 6 times.

The Mechanics behind Calculating ICM

Let’s look at the mechanics behind calculating ICM using an example situation:

• $20 No Limit Hold’em SNG – 6-man.
• Prizes: $84 / $36
• Starting stacks: 1500 (total chips in play = 9000).
• Rick has 4500, Stu has 2700, and Mark has 1800.
• Blinds: 150/300.

The formula starts by calculating how much equity each player has in 1st place money, by looking at what percentage of the total chips a player has in play, and multiplying that by first prize ($84).

From there, the formula has to determine how much equity each player has in second place money ($36).This is a bit more complicated than determining first place equity, but it’s still doable by hand.

If Rick doesn’t win, there are a couple of ways he can take second place. His equity in second prize is the sum total of his equity for the times he doesn’t win, but he beats the remaining player. We will calculate the equity he has in second prize:

Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values Price Guide

We should do the same for Stu:

and Mark:

…and if you add it up, this is what you get:

Armed with this information each player can use it to their advantage. Rick should know that he can shove on Stu’s big blind quite frequently. Stu will know he is risking $38.70 when he calls, and will get barely half of that back when he wins, so he will have to win more than 60% of the time to make a call if Rick pushes on him, and since only some hands win that often against Rick’s wide pushing range, he will fold a lot. Mark will know that if the others are in a lot of pots together, he may end up getting second by default, which drives his equity up from $27.09 to at least $36 (second prize) on a hand where he folded before the flop!

The Limitations of ICM

Independent Chip Modeling (ICM) is one of the most accurate ways to analyze the current value of your chip stack in a Sit & Go. But because it’s a purely math-based formula it misses some intangibles that the math doesn’t account for that should affect your decisions.

Lets look at some of these intangibles.

ICM Underestimates the Chip Leader’s Value

This is by far the biggest limitation of ICM. If we’re playing a $20 SNG with a total of 13,500 chips in play (9-man, 1,500 starting stacks), and the remaining stacks are as follows; 6750, 2250, 2250, 2250, then ICM calculates the equity of the 6,750 stack by assuming that since he has half of the chips in play (6750/13500 = 50%), then he will win half the time. However, even if these players are equally skilled, the 6,750 stack will be able to use his leverage to dominate the table, and perhaps win as often as 60-65% of the time. This means that being the chip leader is an advantage that ICM does not account for.

How to adjust your game…

If you’re the chip leader, call a push less often than ICM would suggest that you do to protect your lead. If you’re a middle stack and calling would give you the chip lead, then call wider than ICM would suggest so that, should you win, you get to reap the benefits.

While a tight game is the cornerstone of early-game success, don’t over do it by making drastic changes to your ranges by playing much tighter than you would in a cash game or MTT. Simply play slightly tighter in a SNG than these other formats. By accumulating chips in the early going, you are setting yourself up to have the chip lead going into the bubble phase of the game, and you’ll enjoy this benefit.

ICM and the Position of the Blinds

ICM doesn’t account for the position of the blinds. This is important to remember especially when the blinds get high, or when two players have very short stacks. Here is an example. Stacks 7100, 4900, 600, 400, with payouts of $45 ,$27, $18. Blinds are 300-600. Here is the ICM calculation:

In this situation, with the blinds at 300-600, ICM shows that Mark’s stack is worth $12.99 and Doyle’s is worth $8.73. The truth of the matter is that the biggest consideration is which player will be in the big blind next. Should Mark have to play from the big blind before Doyle, then Doyle’s equity is higher than Mark’s because Doyle is facing elimination first.

How to adjust your game…

Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values Cheat

If you are going to eat a big blind that is more than one-third of your stack soon, before anyone else will, then shove wider to protect your stack. You don’t want to be forced to call with a bad hand in the big blind.

If you’re short stacked but someone else will face elimination before you within the next few hands, play a very tight range.

ICM Assumes Fixed Blinds

ICM assumes fixed blinds and does not account for blind increases, or fold equity. One of your largest weapons in poker, other than your chips and your cards, is your fold equity, which is your ability to win an uncontested pot when you push your chip stack. Your fold equity diminishes as your chip stack diminishes, but should you drop below 5 big blinds, your fold equity diminishes drastically, as your opponents will often be committed to call any push you make.

If you have 5-9BB or 8-12BB with the blinds about to increase, you are in a position where your stack will likely drop. In this situation you are in immediate danger of falling below this 5BB threshold. ICM calculates the number of chips you have divided by the number of chips in play to determine your equity, so it has no knowledge of this.

How to adjust your game…

If you are using an ICM calculator to determine your pushing range and you are going to lose your fold equity if you do not push, then push wider than recommended.

If a solid player is in danger of losing their fold equity, and they push, realize they may be shoving a wider range, and call slightly wider than ICM recommends.

If the other effective stacks are dropping below 5BB as well, then do not push wider, because even if you gain chips, your fold equity is gone anyway, as your opponents with 4BB and less will call you with a similar range whether you have 4BB, 6BB, or 14BB.

Conclusion

Texas Holdem Tournament Chip Values Chart

Understanding the concept of ICM fundamental to success in SNGs. You don’t need to be a math geek to understand ICM – just being aware of the concept is the most valuable knowledge a successful SNG player can possess. If you can find a hand history of your own, then take an example of two, and work through it yourself. Play around with ICM calculators and study situations away from the table. It’s a great way to learn.

As was said at the beginning of this lesson – due to the non-linear value of tournament chips, the chips that you risk will be of a lesser value than those you stand to gain. Therefore the most important thing to remember is that your last chip is always going to be your most valuable chip. If you’ve fully grasped this concept then you’ll know that your chips and the leverage they provide is your biggest weapon.

By Jennifear

Jennifear is an online professional MTT and SNG player. She is a well-regarded, highly experienced and hugely popular poker coach who has taught hundreds of successful players.