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Reddit Poker Chips
These are just like the chips found at Zynga Poker or the play money section of PokerStars. There are play money games running around the clock at Global, both cash games and tournaments, and leaderboards even reward those who display the most acumen in these not-for-real tables.
I was at a friend’s house recently and the topic of poker came up. During the conversation, he asked me, “can you play poker without chips?” After answering him, the question got me thinking so I did a bit of research and decided to share a few tips on how to play poker without chips.
Poker games are built around wagering or betting. Therefore, unless you are strictly playing for fun you will need some form of currency or monetary substitute available to play with. Otherwise, it is virtually impossible to know who is winning or losing. Almost universally, the most common thing used in lieu of real currency is poker chips.
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However, sometimes an impromptu poker game will happen and no actual poker chips will be available. Fear not. You probably have numerous different options to use as an alternative somewhere in your house or place of business. I know because I scoured my house and office for ideas to fulfill the needs of avid poker players when it comes to playing without chips.
Here are a few obvious and maybe not so obvious quasi-poker chip options:
1. Spare Change
Okay, so this is the obvious one so I saved it for last since you might have forgotten about your kid’s piggy bank or those coins built up in the center console of your car. Speaking of which, I once built a $4,000 bankroll from the spare change lying around. If I can do it, surely you could use those accidental savings to play a quick game with your family or buddies. Rolls of pennies, nickels, dimes, or all three would serve perfectly. Just make sure you set the parameters ahead of time dictating whether the winner actually gets to keep the money.
2. Play Money
Perhaps the most common option that one might have lying around the house is in the form of play money collected from various board games. The most obvious that come to mind are Monopoly, Payday, and the Game of Life. It’s likely that one or more of these types of games are stuffed in a closet or cabinet somewhere. If so, the fake cash will serve you well in a game of poker. Maybe the most fun part of using play money comes from pretending like the money is real and you are a group of high rollers!
3. Board Game Pieces
While you’re raiding the game closet if you find that you do not have any board games that contain play money all hope is not lost. Many other games contain game pieces that can substitute fairly well for poker chips. Here are a few examples of games that have either some form of chip or other items that can be used as money. Most everyone has at least one of the following games that contain good poker chip substitutes: Othello, Connect 4, Backgammon, and Checkers. In a pinch, one could even bet with Scrabble tiles.
If you have multiple games with reasonably useful game pieces, feel free to mix and match so that you have enough quantity to play poker with. Scrabble tiles could be $1, red Connect 4 chips could be $5, all the way up to using black Othello pieces as $1,000 chips.
4. Dried Foods
Another option that could upset your significant other is to use common dried foods from the kitchen pantry. Dried beans, corn, and/or legumes work well since they won’t make a huge mess and are typically available in large quantities. You could even boil them up afterward and have some poker chili!
Just be sure not to use any foods that are ready to eat. For most, the temptation is too great and you will probably eat up all the profits. Besides that, who wants to eat an M&M that has been touched by everyone at the poker table. That’s pretty gross.
5. Office Supplies
If you are playing an impromptu game at the office, your options will be limited with no poker chips. Even so, I’m sure there are plenty of items in desk drawers that will do nicely in a poker game. Just make sure the boss isn’t around.
Here are a few things that might be laying around or in a desk drawer:
- Paper clips (Preferably Color)
- Tacks
- Rubber bands
- Posted Notes (Fold Them)
6. Color Popsicle Sticks
This is a great stackable option that most households, especially those with kids, have stuffed in a drawer somewhere. I recommend cutting each stick into thirds to stretch out the number of “chips” that you have. This will add a nice variety to your game.
If you don’t happen to have color popsicles, then it wouldn’t take long to just write different denominations on each stick. The best way to do it is to give a stack to each player who is tasked with writing on a different amount. Otherwise, you can just have the sticks serve as one single denomination.
7. Garage Items
Your typical garage likely has numerous items that can come in multiples and can serve as poker chips. This is especially true if you have a dedicated toolbox that almost always contains a wide assortment of the following:
- Nuts
- Bolts
- Nails
- Washers
- Fasteners
- Electrical Terminals
How Many “Chips” Do You Need to Play Poker?
For most poker games you typically need about 500 poker chips for the game. However, games with 6 players or less can usually get by on 300. This sounds like a lot, but it’s really not since your house or office typically will have a variety of items which can act as a poker chip substitute. Of course, if you have rolls of coins you just evenly distribute them among the players.
What Type of Game Should We Play?
My advice is to only play short stacked cash games or tournaments where the blinds don’t go up. That way you don’t have to round up too many chip replacement items and can just get on with the business of playing poker. After all, your significant other or boss might not appreciate you digging around like a groundhog and making a huge mess!
Assigning Denominations
Without real poker chips available, the best thing you can do is to keep things simple and only use three different poker chip amounts. I would recommend playing 25/50 blinds and giving the following “chips” or denominations that go in a player’s stack:
- $25- 8 Chips
- $100- 8 Chips
- $500- 2 Chip
This setup will give each player $2,000 or 40 big blinds to start with. This allows for an exciting action-packed game. If you need some advice on playing short stacked, I wrote a brief guide with charts that anyone can obtain for free by signing up for my newsletter. Feel free to use my raising ranges or whatever you like so that you can dominate your friends!
What If Someone Runs out of Chips?
Reddit Zynga Poker Chips
If someone busts out, my advice is to let them “rebuy” for a half stack of 20 big blinds or $1,000. That way no one is ever out of the game and some will be able to play deep-stacked as the game progresses.
Alternative Methods of Playing
If everyone in your poker group has access to a computer or even a smartphone/tablet, another option is to play for play money against each other “LAN party” style. There are numerous poker sites out there that offer play money games where you are able to create your own “home game” table to battle against your friends. I recommend Pokerstars since they have the smoothest software and have a way to set up private home games.
Don’t Forget to Use Good Playing Cards
Good playing cards are relatively inexpensive. So, if you can’t afford good poker chips but want to still have a classy game, pick up a quality deck of cards!
Attributions LAN party image by Sanza29 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Being a supplier of poker chips we are often asked what a good breakdown is for a poker game. Our immediate response is normally, “it depends”. Is it a cash game or tournament? How many chips do your players like to have in front of them? Do you ever see your stakes rising in the future? How deep do your players get by the end of the night?
Dia de los Muertos poker chips
There are many factors to consider when figuring out a breakdown of chips for your poker game. Make sure to consider them all. Take some time and work out your breakdown in writing so you can visualize the chips being used.
Let’s consider a poker game that is only a tournament. This is the most common type of game that is being played in home games.
Try to not think about just how many “chips” that a player starts with. You can have a player start with 100,000 chips but if the blinds are 1000/2000 in the first level they will have shorter stacks compared to a player that starts with 5000 chips with the first blinds being 25/50. In the first situation the player starts with 50 big blinds while in the second situation the player starts with 100 big blinds. That is a big difference!
So, try to think about how many big blinds (BB) you want each player to start with. A good rule of thumb is that most tournaments start with 50-100 BBs but some players prefer deep-stack tournaments that start with 100+ BBs.
Now, consider how many actual physical chips you want each player to start with. Most players like to have a HUGE stack in front of them, but you have to realize that players need to start with a smaller stack or else you will have to purchase a very large number of chips. In a normal home game tournament players will start with 20-30 chips.
Tournament
Finally, consider how many players you will have in your tournaments and how long the tournament will normally last. If there are a lot of players (20+ players) it will mean that there will be a lot of initial chips on the tables. There will be so many chips that you will have to “color up” the lower denomination chips at some point during the tournament. So, you will need to have higher denomination chips than the initial starting poker chips.
Let’s look at an example set up:
Total players: 20
Starting blinds: 25/50
Starting stack: 5000 (100 BB)
Number of poker chips to start with: 21
Initial chips that each player has in front of them:
- 4 – “25” chips = 100
- 9 – “100” chips = 900
- 8 – “500” chips = 4000
Starting stack of our Nevada Jack Skulls poker chips.
Total number of physical poker chips to start with: 21 X 20 = 420 poker chipsAt some point during the tournament the “25” chips will be useless since the blinds will be in even “100’s”. At that point you can “color up” the “25” chips. So, you will need more “100” and possibly more “500” chips. So, it is suggested that another 20 “100” chips be added.
Extra “100” chips for coloring up during the tournament:
- 20 – “100” chips
This brings the total chips needed for this game to 440 poker chips. At this point it is suggested that extra chips are added for a few reasons. Maybe you will have a game where 22 people show up. Some chips may get lost over time, etc.
Extra chips for special circumstances:
- 30 – “25” chips
- 20 – “100” chips
- 10 – “500” chips
This brings the total count of chips to:
- 110 – “25” chips
- 220 – “100” chips
- 170 – “500” chips
- 500 total poker chips
That is a general overview of how to figure out what poker chips to get for a tournament. Let’s discuss a cash game since this will be a bit different.
Cash Game
It is understood that cash games can vary drastically in stakes. Therefore, let’s not focus on the actual value of the chips but think in terms of big blinds (BB’s). I will discuss a $1/2 NL Holdemgame, but will mention BB’s.
The difference with a cash game is that players are often able to rebuy many times. Also, in many games the buy-in is not capped so a player can typically buy-in for 50 BB’s, 100 BB’s, 200 BB’s, or sometimes much higher. So, by the end of a game the value of chips can far exceed what you start with. However, home cash games generally do not involve more than 10 players.
Let’s consider an uncapped $1/2 NL Holdem game that has unlimited rebuys.
On average, the initial buy-in may be 100 BB’s per player ($200). So, let’s figure out the starting chips for each player:
- 15 - $1 chips = $15
- 17 - $5 chips = $85
- 4 - $25 chips = $100
- Total – 36 chips = $200
This brings the total number of chips starting out on the table to 360 poker chips (36 X 10 players).
As mentioned, players will often rebuy (sometimes many times) and players may be allowed to buy-in for more than 100 BB’s. This means we have to consider the extra poker chips needed for the game.
The starting value of the chips on the table is $2000 (10 players X $200).
During a typical game, the total value chips at the end of the game will be 2-3X the starting value. So, let’s figure out the extra chips needed if the value is up to 3X the starting value:
- 100 - $5 chips = $500
- 20 - $25 chips = $500
- 10 - $100 chips = $1000
Reddit Poker Chips Online
This brings the total chips needed to (490 = 360 + 130).As with the tournament, it is best to add extra chips for the situations where the game gets very deep. You also may want to prepare for if the game grows into a higher stakes game such as $2/5.
Here is a suggestion for extra chips that will cover deep games and slightly higher stakes:
- 80 - $25 chips = $2000
- 30 - $100 chips = $3000
Also, consider adding extra poker chips for the occasional lost chip:
- 50 - $1 chips
- 50 - $5 chips
As you can see, with the cash game there are more poker chips to purchase. This is often the case, but you are also prepared for a deep game and for future games when the stakes move up. For this situation the total poker chips suggested is (490 + 120 + 100 = 700).