If you are setting up a poker home game and want to know what each chip is worth and how many to give to each person, you have come to the right place. I have been a poker tournament player for over 10 years and can give you solidanswers.

• Poker Chip Values Las Vegas
• Poker Chip Values Chart
• Antique Poker Chips Price Guide
• Poker Chip Values For $20 Buy In

What are the poker chip values for home games?

• White or Gray – $1
• Red – $5
• Blue – $10
• Green – $25
• Black – $100
• Purple – $500
• Yellow – $1,000
• Pink – $5,000
• Orange- $10,000

While these are the traditional values assigned for poker chips, what denominations you use can be tailored for whatever type of game you happen to be playing. The rest of this article will cover everything you need to know about optimizing your poker home game so that your friends will think you are a pro.

Tournament Poker Chips Values & Colors. Poker tournaments are different from cash games as blinds constantly change. So, tournaments usually require a wider array of poker chip denominations. Also, tournaments traditionally start at higher blind levels like 25/50 or 50/100, so smaller poker chips values aren’t needed. This is a discussion on POker Chip Values.Question?? Within the online poker forums, in the General Poker section; is this right.srry lol. White-1 red-5 Blue-10 green-25 Black-100 and what if.

What Values for Common Chip Sets?

The traditional chip values for each color were established by casinos to represent real money. In other words, a blue chip at a casino can be traded in for a $10 bill.

Nowadays, this system doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for home games unless you happen to be playing a high stakes cash game.

Most people either play cash games for small amounts of money, where the highest denomination is something like $5. Or, they play a tournament.

Setting Up Cash For Games

In cash games, your chips count as actual money and there is no prize pool. If you run out of chips you are out of the game unless you reload. This format is the easiest to organize and play, since you don’t have to worry about a tournament clock or rising blind levels.

Cash Game Chip Values

If you are using your poker chips to play a home cash game, I recommend just following the traditional rules. White is $1, red is $5, blue is $10, green is $25. This will cover you for games up to $2/$5 blinds.

If you want to play higher stakes, say $5/$10 or $10/$20, you will need black and possibly purple chips. Or, you can just convert the white chips to $100 and red to $500 if your set does not contain black and purple.

How Many Poker Chips Do We Need for Cash Games?

A good rule of thumbs is to figure that you need at least 50 chips for every person in the game.

Mostbudget chipsets come with at least 300 chips with 5 different colors. That usually includes 100 white chips and 50 of the other colors. That is usually enough for up to 5 or 6 people to comfortably play without worrying about having enough chips.

If you have 6 or more players, you will definitely want to invest in a 500 piece set, like this inexpensive one (Click to see Amazon Listing).

If you want to customize the denominations of an individual poker chipset, you will likely need to get a higher-end brand, like my absolute favorite chipset.

How Many Poker Chips per Person? What Do They Start With?

In cash games, poker players may buy in for as much as they want. If you want to set a minimum or a maximum, that is fine. A 20 big blind(bb) minimum and a 100bb maximum are common.

Here are the chip distributions for common stack buy-in sizes:

$1.00/$2.00 Blinds

$2.00/$5.00 Blinds

$5.00/$10.00 Blinds

$10.00/$25.00 Blinds

What If We Want to Play Smaller Stakes?

If you want to play a small friendly game, feel free to play as low as you want. For example, you could make chips worth the following:

• White – $0.10
• Red – $0.25
• Blue – $1.00

Here is a good distribution for playing .10/.25 blinds. For a friendly game, I recommend playing with 40 big blind stacks of $10 each:

$0.10/$0.25 Blinds

By choosing to play 40bb each, no one would be likely to lose more than $50 in a typical night. I included the 100bb distribution if you prefer deeper stacked play.

Tournament Setup & Starting Stack Distributions

Tournaments are actually a fairly recent invention that has grown immensely in popularity since Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003. Now, it’s the most common poker format played in home games.

The great thing about tournaments is that it’s easy to limit the amount you can lose in a session. If it’s a $10 buy-in that’s all you can lose for the events. Just throw your money in a hat and play.

Tournaments do, however, take a bit more organization and maintaience from the host. You have to:

• Setup and decide on the prizes
• Manage the rising blind levels
• “Color up” the chips as the blinds go up

Poker Tournament Chip Values

If you decide to play a poker tournament and want to be able to play more than 5 or 6 blind levels, then you will need at least 4 chip colors. Most chip sets now come with at least red, white, green, and black.

Here is a simple and flexible chip value system commonly used in live poker tournaments:

• Red – $25
• White – $100
• Green – $500
• Black – $1,000
• Pink – $5,000

This distribution will work perfectly in most events with less than 30 people.

If you get to the point where $5,000 or $10,000 chips are needed, you can just bring $25 chips back into play and change them to whatever is needed. Or, if you have a 5th color, usually either black or pink, you can designate them as $5,000 or $10,000 chips.

Poker Chip Values Las Vegas

It’s also okay to get creative and find an item laying around the house that can act as a substitute for the higher chips.

How Many Poker Chips Are Needed for Tournaments?

Tournaments tend to require fewer chips per person since the chips are usually worth more each. Even so, a common 300 piece set will still only accommodate up to 6 players. It is definitely worth your while to have at least a 500 piece set for every 9 people that will be playing.

I did some research and found a really good inexpensive 500-piece set (Click for Amazon price). I would suggest getting one of these for every 9-person table you are hosting.

What If My Chip Set Only Comes with Three Colors?

Some of the cheaper chips sets come with three colors. Usually, you get white, red, and blue.

For tournaments, if you only three chip colors you will want to assign them as follows:

• Red – $25
• White – $100
• Blue- $500

If you have different colors, use the same values but just assign them to whatever color you want.

How Many Poker Chips per Person?

For most home game tournaments, a solid option is to have each player start with 3,000 chips using the following distribution:

• 8 Red $25 Chips
• 8 White $100 Chips
• 2 Green $500 Chips
• 1 Black $1,000 Chips

This will have each player starting with 60 big blinds. I find this amount to be a good balance between having enough room to play without having the event take too long.

What If We Want to Play Deeper Stacked?

If you want to play a deeper stacked tournament and have enough chips to go around, I recommend starting with $10,000 chips each with the following distribution:

• 8 Red $25 Chips
• 8 White $100 Chips
• 8 Green $500 Chips
• 5 Black $1,000 Chips

What blind levels should we play?

Based on the recommended chip distributions, here is a solid blind level schedule:

Helpful hint: If you want a deeper stacked feel to the tournament but don’t have many chips, just play a standard 3,000 stack with longer blind levels. Instead of the usual 15 or 20-minute blind levels, you might play 30 or 45-minute levels.

How Long Should Blind Levels Be?

For most home games, I advocate never having blind levels higher than 20 minutes. 15 minutes is a really popular choice. Even 1 table events will still last a couple of hours using this speed.

If you want a fast event, go with 10-minute levels. In live play, 5 minutes is difficult to maintain and it will only allow 2-3 hands per blind level.

When Should I Color up the Chips?

Here is a good schedule for removing smaller chips and introducing a larger denomination:

What Is a Good Tournament Prize Schedule?

For friendly home poker tournament games, I recommend a fairly wide distribution of prizes. Therefore, I suggest paying out at least 1/3 of the field. Here is an example payout structure:

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, I have given you all the information you need to get set up for your poker home game. If I missed anything please be sure to let me know in the comments and I will get it added.

Also, if you need more help planning your poker event, be sure to check out my article on hosting the perfect poker night. And don’t forget to use high-quality playing cards, they’ll take your game to the next level. Thanks for stopping by!

Related Products

If you want to really add class to your home poker games, here are a few products that I recommend:

• Copag Playing Cards– My favorite premium brand of playing cards. Trust me on this, don’t use those cheap Bicycle cards anymore.
• Octagon Folding Table– For smaller games with 5 players or less.
• Oval Poker Table– For games with 6 or more players.
• Heavy Duty Folding Chairs– These will fit any size player up to 600 pounds. I come from a rather “large” family if you catch my drift. Make sure you have good solid chairs to prop them up.

Related Questions

What is a short stack in poker? A short stack if poker is usually any chip stack that is 40 big blinds or lower. 50 to 100 big blinds is a mid stack, while greater than 100 big blinds is usually called a deep stack.

What poker table shape is best for home games? The best poker table shape for a home game varies based on how many players you are hosting. You will also need to factor in the size of the space you are fitting the table into. A safe bet is to buy an oval-shaped table. They usually seat at least 6 players comfortably and come in a variety of sizes.

How many buy-ins should I take to a poker game? When going to a casino or home game to play poker, it is usually a good idea to take at least 3 buy-ins for the stake you intend to play. However, it is a personal decision as to how many buy-ins you can stand to lose in one session. Limiting the amount of money you can lose in a poker session is known as setting a “stop-loss.”

When you sit at a poker table and glance around at the piles of chips in front of the players, you need to be able to assess the playing field quickly. To be on par with the professionals, you should have the ability to take in the poker chip values of each stack at a glance. You should remember that these can differ from casino to casino and from one poker site to the next.

The Standard: At Home

While these denominations aren’t fixed across casinos and there aren’t any official rules, there are poker chip standards that we can identify across casinos and poker events, so we can better replicate an authentic and accurate poker match in a private setting.

The basic set of poker chips used in private games and across most casinos usually consists of four to five denominations and colors. White chips at 1, red at 5, sometimes blue at 10, green at 25 and black chips for a top value of 100.

These basic values are a great starting point for hosting your own poker games at home, with relatively small stakes on the line meaning that you don’t need a wide range of poker chip values. Indeed, these colors are found in the many home kits available widely, and are unmarked so you can customize the value.

Full Poker Chip Standard Values

We’ve outlined not only the basic four to five color set, but the full range of poker chip values that you can expect to find if you were to step into any higher stakes games:

• White – 1
• Yellow – 2 (sometimes used)
• Red – 5
• Blue – 10
• Grey – 20
• Green – 25
• Orange – 50
• Black – 100
• Pink – 250
• Purple – 500
• Yellow – 1000 (also burgundy or gray)
• Light Blue – 2000
• Brown – 5000

The value of these chips will differ based on the buy in of the game or tournament, and will scale down in their distribution according to the value. For a small stakes home game with a buy-in of $100, the basic set would be the most appropriate, with a white value of as low as 25 cents.

If you’re hosting a tournament with friends from the comfort of your own home, you may be wondering how to distribute the chips in a logical way. The easiest way to break it down your stack sizes for a four-chip tournament is using a ratio of 4:3:2:1, with four times the amount of white chips compared to black, for example.

Poker Chip Values Chart

The Standard: On The Casino Floor

As we mentioned, there is no officially recognized pattern of casino chip coloring across the world, or even across the United States. Many follow the standard above, for the ease of the bettor, but as a way to limit chip forgery, casinos often employ exclusive colorings, markings and values.

Thankfully, with the custom chips, casinos print the value of the chip on the chip itself, aiding to avoid confusion to those who tour around from casino to casino. You don’t want to mistake a $100 chip for a $1! Let’s take a look at the gambling hot spots around the United States.

United States Casinos

Across the United States, the standard coloring is mostly adhered to, with a handful of exceptions. Las Vegas casinos follow the basic poker chip colors, but often include a $20 valued chip, and sometimes $2 brown chips and $3 peach chips, for the lower stakes games.

Atlanta casinos present a chip set that includes a lower-valued pink chip, for $2.50, and also has a $20 chip to round out a lower-stakes game, whereas California presents a whole other color coding system that differs from the standard completely. Bear in mind that in each casino you can find their own poker chip value chart on hand, so you’ll never be at a loss.

European Casinos

European casinos follow the same basic color standard as the States for their poker chip values. This is particularly handy for those intercontinental touring gamblers who shape their holidays around the poker or blackjack tables.

What is more common in the old world, however, is to mark the higher denominations with delicious looking rectangular tokens called ‘plaques’. These weighty chips add a bit of drama to the poker table with their size and design!

The Standard: At Tournaments

Shaping a lot of the aspirations of the professional gamblers and entertainment of the casual, professional tournaments have their own unique standards of poker chip values, colors and distribution that make them stand out, both in America and Europe.

These tournaments, due to their competitive nature, scale-up in blinds and have huge denominations that result in dramatic and exciting tournaments. The chips of low levels are stacked up and taken out of play, once the blinds and stakes get high enough.

The World Series of Poker

The World Series of Poker, or WSOP as it’s well-known by, is an American poker tournament that is arguably the biggest tournament in the world.

There are many tournaments that run during the annual series, with the $10,000 Main Event being the most-watched spectacle in the worldwide poker circuit. Due to this, there are various chip sets employed throughout the series, so as to differentiate between the tournaments and to establish each tournament’s identity and flair.

In general, all the tournaments build up from a standard color coding of a 25 green chip and a 100 black chip. Up from 100 is where the variation starts. Let’s take a look at the the Main Event’s standard chip set employed for the past few years, with the chip base’s accent colors in parentheses:

• Green (forest green/yellow) – 25
• Black (day blue/dark blue) – 100
• Desert flower (maroon/pink) – 500
• Canary yellow (plum/sherbet orange) – 1000
• Blaze orange (dark brown/tan) – 5000
• Forest green (blue/yellow) – 25,000
• Hot pink (lime green/dark green) – 50,000
• Hawaii flower (charcoal/metallic silver) – 100,000
• Almond (bronze/butterscotch) – 250,000
• Red (day blue/white) – 500,000

Bear in mind that these values can change, and that they often do at the final table, to add more dramatic flare and differentiation to this prestigious event.

The European Poker Tour

The European equivalent of the WSOP, the European Poker Tour, is a series of Texas Hold’em poker tournaments differing from WSOP in currency, format and nationality of players, among other things.

Unlike WSOP, the EPT tournaments all employ the same poker chip sets, and the standardisation is welcome for those casual players wishing to emulate EPT tournaments from their own home, a blessing in recent pandemic times, with most tournaments on hold for the near future.

• Green – 25
• Black – 100
• Purple – 500
• Red – 1000
• Yellow/orange – 5000
• Blue – 10,000
• Grey – 25,000
• Pink – 50,000

Across all poker tournaments, and indeed all casino poker sites, it’s essential to recognize that the poker chip values are not the same as money. They may equate exactly to the buy-in amount when you add it all up, but they are not referred to in dollar amount, or euro amounts for the EPT, but in straight numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Since poker chip colors and values can differ so greatly from casino to casino and continent to continent, we receive so many questions on them, like the rest of our guides to the casino world. Here we’ve collated the most commonly asked questions and answered them for you.

How much poker chips do you start with?

That depends on a few factors, such as the buy in of the game you’re playing, the casino you’re in, and more. As a rule of thumb, for a home game with a small buy in of $300, players can expect around 30 chips with the value adding up to 300. Check out the best poker casinos out there and see how they do it.

How much are each color poker chips worth?

The value of each chip differs from casino to casino, as there is no officially regulated standard that exists. There is a loose standard, with four to five basic colors that many casinos follow, but for security reasons many casinos employ their own patterns and colors. You can sidestep the confusion by jumping online and checking out the video poker variations on offer.

Antique Poker Chips Price Guide

Are casino chips worth money?

Casino chips are only worth money inside the establishment that you received them. They have no worth outside of those walls. It’s best to exchange them as soon as you finish up a session, so that you can access the real value. You can avoid the hassle all together by taking a look at the best online poker sites.

Can you cash old casino chips?

Poker Chip Values For $20 Buy In

Yes, generally a casino will honor old casino chips assuming that the casino itself still exists! For higher denominations, there may be an exchange period after which they will no longer be of any value, but for the low denominations, there is no limit. If, on the other hand, you are playing at online casinos, this is not something that you need to worry about.