The game of poker is kind of like a complex machine with many integral parts. From the cards to the blinds and the button, all the way down to the players and the dealer, every element has a part to play.
However, what some players don’t realise is that among those crucial elements are poker chips. The introduction of poker chips was so groundbreaking that it standardised the game, allowing poker to spread around much easier. But how would knowing poker chip values help you when playing a typical poker game? We’re glad you asked!
With this article, we’ll look at how poker chip values tie into your gameplay.
WHAT ARE POKER CHIP VALUES?
In any poker game, whether you’re playing live at an online casino or at a land-based venue, you will always use plastic chips to wager. Each chip will have its own value.
In cash games, these poker chip values will represent actual cash, which is how the value of your bet will be determined. So, for example, a €20 poker chip would equate to €20 in cash.
That said, things may be a little different in a poker tournament. Most poker chips have denominations engraved/printed on them to prevent betting mistakes. In tournaments, poker chip denominations are used to track a competitor’s progress and usually cannot be exchanged for money. Either way, having a good idea of poker chip values is important.
STANDARD POKER CHIP VALUES AND COLOURS
In most cash games, you’ll find that many poker chip sets allocate specific colours to specific monetary values. And, once you get the chip colours down, it’s pretty much plain sailing from there. Mistakes happen often, so it is good practice to have an understanding of the colours and their values.
Here’s a list of the most common colours in a poker chip set that you’ll find at most casinos and poker rooms:
- White chips: €1
- Red chips: €5
- Yellow chips: €20
- Green chips: €25
- Black chips: €100
- Purple chips: €500
- Maroon/orange chips: €1,000
What some poker players don’t know is that there is actually some logic to each chip value. The darkest chips often have the highest value to ensure that they stand out and prevent poker players from reaching for them accidentally. In cases where a player reaches for higher-valued poker chips instead of lower-valued ones, they will have to remain with the chip they chose as the rules of poker stipular that the bet stands if they did not verbalise their intention.
Most rooms will feature white chips, red poker chips, green chips and black chips, but as you move to high-stakes games, you’ll come across higher poker chip denominations. For example, purple chips and maroon chips are quite common in a high-stakes cash game.
TOURNAMENT POKER CHIPS VALUES & COLOURS
It’s pretty safe to say that a poker tournament setup is different from the setup in cash games, as blinds constantly change. For this reason, poker tournaments often require a more comprehensive range of poker chip denominations, especially considering that many major tournaments begin with higher blind levels, so lower-valued poker chips aren’t needed.
Here’s an example of common poker chip values used in tournaments:
- Red chips — €25
- White chips — €100
- Green chips — €500
- Black chips — €1,000
- Pink chips — €5,000
If you come to a point in a tournament where a chip value of more than €5,000 is needed, you can simply reinstate the €25 red chip with a value of whatever is needed.
Many casinos use different chip sets to run tournaments. Rules for colours and denominations also vary, so they’re definitely not as uniform as in cash games. That said, most tournament directors will list information regarding blind levels and the prize pool, among other things, in their poker software, which will be displayed on your screen.
While this may sound like you will have a lot to remember, don’t worry. Major high-stakes tournaments like the World Series of Poker and European Poker Tour have been using the same poker chip values for quite some time, so you’ll rarely find many variations across events unless you’re competing at smaller tournaments.
POKER CHIP VALUES AND COLOURS IN HOME GAMES
Tournament chip values vary significantly from chip values used in home games. This time, it will be up to you to decide on the distributions, although when using a set of poker chips with standard values, it’ll be easy to run a €1/€2 or €2/€5 cash game. So, that setup could look like this:
- White chips — €1
- Red chips — €5
- Green chips — €25
- Black chips — €100
Of course, considering home games are so casual, you could also use a smaller setup than that with poker chip values like:
- White poker chips — €0.10
- Forest green poker chips — €0.25
- Red poker chips — €5
- Black poker chips — €10
With a setup like this, you won’t have to worry about having enough chips, especially if you’re using a standard set of 500 betting discs. That said, with home games, you obviously have much more freedom, especially if you reach a push-fold stage where you can choose to change a poker chip value — as long as other players agree to it, of course.
HOW MANY POKER CHIPS ARE NEEDED IN POKER GAMES?
If you’re about to set up a home game but have no idea how to distribute chips, a good rule of thumb is to assign 50 chips to every person at the poker table. Most chip sets come with about 300 chips with five different colours, which is a comfortable amount for five or six players. More competitors would require a 500-piece poker set.
HOW MANY POKER CHIPS ARE NEEDED FOR HOME GAMES?
So, as we’ve mentioned previously, the number of poker chips needed would depend on the number of competitors. However, a 300 or 500-piece poker set would suffice. Chip distribution may vary depending on a few factors, so allow us to break it all down.
THE NUMBER OF POKER CHIPS PER PLAYER
The rules of cash games stipulate that players may buy in as much as they want, but the organiser of the cash game may set a minimum and maximum if they wish. A big blind minimum of €20 and maximum of €100 are common distributions, but take a look at the following table that compares buy-in sizes and distributions:
€1.00/€2.00 Blinds
| Poker Chip Values | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy-in | White (€1) | Red (€5) | Blue (€10) | Green (€25) |
| 20bb or €40 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| 50bb or €100 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 0 |
| 100bb or €200 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 2 |
€2.00/€5.00 Blinds
| Poker Chip Values | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy-in | White (€1) | Red (€5) | Blue (€10) | Green (€25) |
| 20bb or €100 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 0 |
| 50bb or €250 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 4 |
| 100bb or €200 | 20 | 16 | 10 | 12 |
€5.00/€10.00 Blinds
| Poker Chip Values | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy-in | White (€1) | Red (€5) | Blue (€10) | Green (€25) |
| 20bb or €100 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| 50bb or €250 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 2 |
| 100bb or €200 | 20 | 10 | 10 | 6 |
€10.00/€25.00 Blinds
| Poker Chip Values | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy-in | White (€1) | Red (€5) | Blue (€10) | Green (€25) |
| 20bb or €100 | 10 | 8 | 2 | 0 |
| 50bb or €250 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 1 |
| 100bb or €200 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 3 |
BUY INS FOR SMALLER STAKES
Now that you’ve gotten an idea of what buy-ins to set, what happens to those values if you want to play a cash game with lower stakes?
Since you are the organiser, you can set your poker chip values like this:
- White poker chips — €0.10
- Red chips — €0.25
- Blue chips — €1.00
Take a look at this distribution when using a blind level of €0.10/€0.25. It is recommended that you use 40 big blind stacks of €10 each:
€0.10/€0.25 Blinds
| Poker Chip Values | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy-in | White (€1) | Red (€0.25) | Blue (€1.00) |
| 40bb or €10 | 10 | 8 | 7 |
| 100bb or €25 | 20 | 16 | 14 |
HOW MANY CHIPS ARE NEEDED IN POKER TOURNAMENTS?
Earlier, we discussed how tournaments differ from regular cash games due to the fact that the blinds constantly change. For this reason, poker competitions generally require a wider range of denominations and higher-value poker chips.
The number of chips needed would depend on the number of competitors. For example, 20-person competitions require approximately 1,000-1,500 poker chips, which distributes to 50-75 chips per player.
HOW MANY POKER CHIPS ARE NEEDED FOR HOME TOURNAMENTS?
Home competitions differ slightly from large-scale tournaments and tend to require fewer chips per player too. That said, a 300-piece poker chip set will only accommodate up to six players, so a 500-piece poker chip set would be required for every nine players.
Despite this, you may still have a few questions about home championships, and luckily for you, we’ve got all the answers:
THREE-COLOUR SETS
One of the biggest questions players have when playing poker at home is how to distribute chips when they only come in three colours — red, white and blue. In this case, players can assign poker chip values as follows:
- Red-coloured chips — €25
- White poker chips — €100
- Blue chips — €500
Of course, if your chip set comes with different colours, you can assign these cash game chip values how you like.
POKER CHIPS PER PLAYER IN HOME COMPETITIONS
Assigning 3,000 chips per player is a solid option when playing home game championships. That way, they can follow this distribution:
- Red-coloured chips — €25 (eight)
- White-coloured chips — €100 (eight)
- Green-coloured chips — €500 (two)
- Black-coloured chips — €1,000 (one)
By following this distribution, each player will begin with 60 big blinds.
DISTRIBUTION FOR DEEPER STACKED GAMES
Some players may feel that playing with a short stack does not truly show off their poker skills, so would rather play with higher stakes in a deeper stacked competition. It is recommended that players begin with €10,000 distributed in the following way:
- Red-coloured chips — €25 (eight)
- White-coloured chips — €100 (eight)
- Green-coloured chips — €500 (eight)
- Black-coloured chips — €1,000 (five)
BLIND LEVELS FOR HOME COMPETITIONS
So, how do the blind levels come into play? Well, following the recommended distributions, this is what your blind schedule would look like:
| Blind Level | Small Blind/Big Blind |
| 1 | 25/50 |
| 2 | 50/100 |
| 3 | 100/200 |
| 4 | 200/400 |
| 5 | 300/600 |
| 6 | 500/1000 |
| 7 | 1000/2000 |
| 8 | 2000/4000 |
| 9 | 3000/6000 |
| 10 | 5000/10000 |
If you want to play a deeper stacked competition but don’t have many chips, you can use a standard stack of 3,000 chips with more prolonged blind levels. So, in this case, instead of playing 15 or 20-minute blinds, you can play 30 or 45-minute levels, for example.
LENGTH OF BLIND LEVELS
In general, it is recommended that your blind levels do not exceed more than 20 minutes unless, of course, you would like a deeper-stack feel, as mentioned above. A blind level of 15 minutes is the most common choice, allowing you to play for at least a couple of hours.
For faster games, you could go with 10-minute levels; however, it is not recommended to use lower levels than that, especially when playing poker live. This is because shorter levels (like five-minute levels, for instance) will only allow two or three hands per level, which is quite difficult to maintain.
COLOURING UP
Are you looking to remove small chips and introduce larger poker chips? Take a look at this schedule to help you when deciding to colour up:
| Level to Colour Up | Remove Chips | Add Chips |
| Level 3 (100/200) | Colour up €25 Chips | – |
| Level 6 (500/100) | Colour up €100 Chips | €5,000 Chips |
| Level 10 (5000/10000) | Colour up €1,000 Chips | €10,000 Chips |
TOURNAMENT PRIZE SCHEDULE
What would a competiton be without prizes? Home game competitiors need a prize schedule too!
For friendly games, a wide distribution of prizes is recommended, paying out at least ⅓ of the room. Here is the payout structure you could use:
| Players | Positions Paid | Payouts |
| 2 | 1st Place Only | 100% |
| 3 – 6 | Top Two | 75%, 25% |
| 7 – 10 | Top Three | 50%, 30%, 20% |
| 11 – 15 | Top Four | 40%, 30%, 20%, 10% |
| 16 – 20 | Top Five | 40%, 25%, 20%, 10%, 5% |
| 21 – 27 | Top Six | 36%, 22%, 16%, 12%, 8%, 6% |
| 28+ | Top Nine | 30%, 20%, 14%, 10%, 8%, 6%, 5%, 4%, 3% |
POKER CHIP VALUES AND COLOURS IN DIFFERENT CASINOS
Almost all casinos have custom-designed chips to help differentiate their experience from every other casino. Generally, casinos will have their name engraved on the face of the chip, and some chips may even be multi-coloured or have cool patterns. Some casino venues even go as far as to assign certain values to specific colours and create their own colour-coding system.
Let’s take a look at a few different casinos and their poker chips:
ATLANTA CASINOS
Atlanta casinos follow a standard colour-coding system with a basic set of poker chips, including white, pink, red, green and black chips. These may also include the addition of purple or yellow chips, valued at €20, and blue chips, valued at €10.
LAS VEGAS CASINOS
Las Vegas casinos use the standard primary colour-coding system as well, but add $20 chips. The Wynn poker room even includes dark brown chips and peach-coloured chips, valued at $2 and $3, respectively.
CALIFORNIA CASINOS
California casinos use slightly different colours as there are no legal mandates on their betting chips. That said, here is a list of poker chip colours and their values found at most standard poker games:
- Blue (can vary) — $1
- Green — $2
- Red — $3
- Yellow — $5
- Brown — $10
- Black — $20
- Purple — $25
- White (sometimes larger than other chips) — $100
- Brown (these chips are usually larger than other chips) — $500
POKER CHIPS VALUES AND COLOURS IN TOURNAMENTS AND SPECIAL EVENTS
WORLD SERIES OF POKER
As one of the largest championships in the poker world, the World Series of Poker is the main event of the year for many poker fans. According to its official rules, this event has its own tournament chip set that varies from standard poker cash games. Take a look:
- Green WSOP chips: 25
- Black: 100
- Blue: 500
- Yellow: 1,000
- Orange: 5,000
- Dark green: 25,000
- Lavender: 100,000
- Beige: 250,000
The Main Event may often last several days, so blind values can get quite large. In scenarios like these, however, the WSOP would often use oversized chips to represent extra-large chip values. Their colours would be similar to their smaller counterparts but are impossible to mix up due to their size.
EUROPEAN POKER TOUR
The European Poker Tour is another huge poker event. Naturally, this championship does not come with chips with the same values as those in WSOP, but has its own chip set. Here’s what chip values and colours to expect:
- Green: 25
- Black EPT chips: 100
- Purple: 500
- Red EPT chips: 1,000
- Yellow/orange: 5,000
- Blue: 10,000
- Grey: 25,000
- Pink EPT chips: 50,000
UNUSUAL POKER CHIPS
Poker chips are usually designed with a similar pattern, but you may run into a few uncommon chipsets. Some casinos use ceramic chips, while others may have sets with more elaborate designs. Here are some of the rarer chipsets used:
LANCELOT LANCASTER WHITE BUCKINGHAM BOX
Designed by renowned British craftsmen, this set is reportedly worth $38,500. Here are some of its most evident elements:
- Handcrafted wooden box with gilded metal handles.
- A total of 500 ‘Abbiati’ poker chips.
- Velvet padded pockets for each chip.
- Leather-bound decks.
One can imagine that the price tag on this set is quite hefty.
GEOFFREY PARKER ALLIGATOR SET
The poker chips found in this set are nothing short of extraordinary. Here are some of the most notable features of this set:
- Made from 18 carat white gold.
- Diamond encrusted.
- Adorned with 22,364 precious stones housed in alligator hide.
It’s pretty safe to say that this set is quite extravagant.
STAHL METEORITE SET
While this set is more of a one-off, released by the brand Stahl, it still deserves a mention on this list. This set:
- Features 120 chips.
- Features five ivory dice fashioned from Mammoth tusk.
- Includes two high-quality sets of cards.
The box itself is also made out of 18-carat white hold, adorned with precious stones and lined with reindeer calfskin.
YOU DONT NEED CHIPS TO PLAY POKER AT ENERGYCASINO!
If you want to take a break from private poker games and expand your horizons, why not grab your playing cards and try online poker rooms? Most casinos offer great gaming experiences, but at EnergyCasino, we take entertainment to a whole new level.
Play poker for real money at our Live Casino, or take a step back and learn the ropes with our First-Person poker rooms. From high-stake games to tables with low minimum bets, we have it all. You can even explore what other table games we’ve got cooking and give baccarat, roulette, and blackjack a spin!