Use a minimum of 35 chips per player, but 50 to 100 chips per player is even better. Use brand-new decks of cards. You only need one or two decks per table; they're inexpensive, and there's something cool about cracking open a fresh deck when you start playing. Determine your chip denominations. With a low house edge and few How Many Chips Per Person For Texas Holdem rules to learn, craps is one of the best games for new casino players to try. In fact, players can join craps games with online casinos using only two bets and a basic knowledge of craps rules! If 9 players, including you, buy in at $20 (40 big blinds), each player could receive 8 25c and $1 chips respectively, together with two $5 chips. In which case a standard 300-chip. Issue a total of 41 chips to each player - 20x5 + 16x25 + 5x100 = 1000 chips. This is a good chip distribution and your players will seldom have to make change. This chip distribution requires a.

How to hold a Poker Party

A poker party is a great party, best with 6 to 10 people.

Here's what you'll need:

If you don't have any of the stuff then get one of the many poker sets around, they will include the chips, cards and the dealer button.

You might also want to print out our helpful list of poker hand nicknames, these are the names people call particular combinations of hole cards. It does sound so much cooler to declare you've got 'Big Slick' rather than just 'A King and an Ace'

There are an infinite variety of poker games. I'd recommend starting with Texas Hold'Em as it's currently the most popular so more people are likely to know it.

If you have a regular game then you might also want to play a few rounds of 'dealer calls' where the dealer nominates the game for that round (i.e. like in the films where you hear stuff like '5 card draw, deuces and one eyed jacks are wild').

Choosing Poker Chips

There are various 'standards' for the colours of poker chips and what they are worth; for instance the state of New Jersey defines these:

However you probably only want to get four colours so a reasonable set of values might be something like 1, 2, 5 and 25.

You'll want to get more of the lower denomination chips than higher; a reasonable ratio is something like 4/3/2/1 so, for instance, you might want to get 400 white, 300 pink, 200 red and 100 blue chips.

Each player needs to start with a good number of chips, say between 30 and 50, and make sure you have enough left to let people re-buy; you only need the larger value chips left for re-buys as the other players can 'make change'.

Try our simple Poker Chip Calculator to play around with different combinations of chips and buy-ins.

Not so long ago a nice set was really expensive but they have really come down in price. Amazon sell some nice sets, for instance the one on the right.

It's not that much to get nice 'casino quality' chips. Look for ones listed as 'clay' chips weighing 10 - 11.5 grams (although bear in mind that if, for some reason, you need to carry your chips a lot then 1,000 chips at 11.5g each is heavy).

Before the day

If you have beginners then I'd recommend sending out a 'how to play poker' guide about a week before the game. Download a PDF of one I cobbled together from various internet sources here.

Email everyone with basic details: start time, buy in (if playing for real money), whether it's a tournament or cash game, any rules (max raise, re-buys etc).

Print out your rules and ranking of hands sheets.

Texas Holdem Poker Practice

Write/print a sheet with the value of the chips, useful for the first few times people play together (e.g. white=1, red=5, green=25, blue=100)

If you have beginners suggest to them that they arrive promptly, then you'll only have to explain the game play once.

On the day

Not much to do, set out the table, food, beer etc.

Before the game starts

Go over the basic rules.

It's fun to give people chips in a 'virtual' currency. So if they buy in for 10 pounds/dollars you give them 1,000 pounds/dollars of chips, it just makes all the pots seem much bigger. Obviously when cashing out you reverse the process!

Use two packs of cards: at the end of each hand the dealer collects the card, passes the dealer button on and the next dealer starts dealing the second pack. The old dealer shuffles the cards well then passes them to the player after the current dealer ready for a prompt start to the next hand. This keeps the game moving.

If you have more than 10 people you probably want to split into two tables. As people leave you can combine the tables.

If you're going to play for cash rather than just chips then there are three golden rules:

Golden rule 1: Make sure everyone knows the key rules, especially on re-buys and cashing out.

Golden rule 2: Keep the chip stash in a safe place and have one nominated person (usually the host) who takes the cash and gives chips in return (and vice-versa). This person is the only one allowed to do it and has to make up the shortfall if things don't add up. Never trust someone else's count of the chips, count them again in front of them before handing over cash. Countless games have had 'unpleasantness' at the end of the evening when someone miscounts when cashing out, leaves and then there isn't enough to pay the remaining players.

Golden rule 3: Be fairly strict on the mechanics of the game, proper shuffling & cutting, no string bets, no playing out of turn, re-deal if there's a misdeal, if a player steps away from the table they still have to play blinds etc.

Further reading

A friend of mine and his sister have written this excellent book on Texas Hold'Em; great if you want to improve your play.

Also these cards are produced by a good friend of ours and you might find them helpful, especially if you're a beginner.

Got a party tip?

Texas Hold'em Chips Value

If you have a party tip please tell us, email us at tips (at) how-to-hold-a-party (dot) com.

Texas Holdem Starting Chip Count

Buy-In

Buy-in is the dues (usually cash) every player pays to play at a poker tournament . These dues are put in a prize pool to pay the tournament winner(s).

Typical amount of buy in range from $5/player (small house games) to $10,000/player (world series of poker main event). Sometimes the buy-in is in the form of $50+$5. This means that every player will have to pay $55 to get in the game. However only $50 of it goes toward the prize pool and $5 goes to the “house”. The $5 fee is usually to pay for the host’s costs and profit.

If you are hosting a poker tournament you need to specify the amount of the buy in before the game. Use the following points to choose the best buy-in amount:

• How large (number of players) you want your tournament to be. A larger buy-in translates into fewer players. Therefore, if you want to host a large tournament (Ex. a charity poker tournament), you’ll be better off with a smaller buy-in.
• The amount you and other poker players at the game are willing to lose.
• If you are offering dedicated dealers at every table, free food, or for your own profit, you can add a 10% fee to the buy-in amount.

Advice on Buy-In:

Texas Holdem Chips Per Person Game

Following are some Buy-In advice and notes to help you run a smooth and organized poker tournament:

• If you are playing for a large amount, it’s better to set longer blind periods such as half an hour. When players pay a considerable amount of money, they want to at least stay in the game for a while. Long blind period stretches the length of the game.
• Players play tighter when the buy-in amount is large. So if you are hosting an expensive tournament with 3 tables or so expect a long tournament (at least 5 or 6 hours).
• As a rule of thumb take cash only for the buy-in money. There will always be players that “forgot” to bring cash with them or want to play on a loan. Keep in mind that YOU (the tournament host) are responsible to pay the winner at the end. So make everyone pay up front. You can simply tell players in question that you “don’t have enough cash at home to cover them”.
• Write down the name of all players and mark their names “Paid” once you take the buy-in money from them

Rebuys

Imagine you’re hosting a tournament with 15 players and your friend busts out early. He has to sit around and watch everyone play until a new game has started. This is where rebuys come in. The rebuy allows the player who just lost all of his chips to buy back in the tournament.

Imagine you’re hosting a tournament with 15 players and your friend busts out early. He has to sit around and watch everyone play until a new game has started. This is where rebuys come in. The rebuy allows the player who just lost all of his chips to buy back in the tournament.

• The rebuy amount should be the same amount as the original buy-in amount.
• Players who rebuy should get the same amount of chips as they received in the beginning of the game.

Advice on Rebuys

A rebuy tournament has it’s own rules and constraints. Following are the most important ones:

• The number of times that players can rebuy should be set before the game starts. It can be 1, 2, 3 or unlimited.
• Rebuys are only allowed in a limited amount of time in the beginning of the tournament. This time is usually set by the number of times that the tournament blind has increased. For example 2 rebuys per player can be allowed during the first 3 blinds.
• Rebuys can be allowed when a player loses all of his chips or the his chip count goes under a certain level. For example in a tournament where players start with 2500 in chips, rebuys can be allowed when a player’s chip count goes under $500. This rules has to be set prior to starting the tournament.

• Players can only add enough chips to make their stack the original amount. In the above example if a player loses his chips down to 400, he can do a rebuy, but only receive 2100 in chips from the tournament manager.

• If the player wants to rebuy when he still has chips (less than 500 in the above example) he will still have to pay the full amount for rebuy.

• If you do allow rebuys in your poker tournament, make sure you write down the name of players who rebuy with the number of time they have re-bought.

Once you decide to have rebuys at your tournament, you need to decide how many re-buys you want to allow per player. There are two different ways that you can handle this:

• Limited rebuy: A limited rebuy is when each player can rebuy only certain number of times. After rebuying that many times, he/she is out of tournament.
• Unlimited rebuy: In an unlimited rebuy tournament, players can rebuy (buy back) as many times as they want, until the rebuy period is over. A good tournament structure would be to allow unlimited re-buys during the first two/three blinds. Unlimited rebuy also creates larger prize pools.

A poker tournament that does not allow rebuys is called a freezout tournament.

Effects of rebuy on the game:

• Once rebuys are allowed in a tournament players know that they can buy back if they bust out so the game tends to be looser than normal. This varies by the amount of buy-in and rebuy, but in general you are going to have a looser game with rebuys than without rebuy.
• Rebuys tend to create large prize pools. Let’s say if you have a $10 buy in with unlimited re buys for the first hour with 16 players. Without the rebuy you will have $160 in the prize pool. With the rebuy your prize pool usually doubles or triples. The reason for that is $10 is not much and once people lose they want to get back in the game so they spent another $10 and mostly don’t keep track of how many times they’ve bought in.

Basic Strategy Tip

If you are playing at an unlimited rebuy tournament, try to double and triple up fast, but don’t play too loose, and keep in mind if you are doing a rebuy for the fourth or fifth time, you probably should call it the night. After your fourth or fifth rebuy, other players stacks are going to be much larger than the original stack (which is what you would get if you rebuy). This makes it every hard (if not impossible) for you to catch up and be able to make plays if you are re-buying late in the tournament.