Best Poker Chip Set for a Home Game (Real Prices, Every Budget)

I bought almost a thousand poker chips for a four-person game. They're the best looking chips I've ever found and about half of them have never left the case. So, in this video I'm taking one chip set through a whole home game from opening the box to carrying it back to the car and at every step you'll see what the wrong set costs you. Then I'll give you the exact set I'd buy for your group with real prices I checked this week. And one set on the list comes with the cards already solved. >> [music] >> Because in my cards video I said the upgrade order goes cards, then chips, then the table. The cards are the first thing your players touch. The chips are the second and they're the thing people play with all night. Stacking them, shuffling them, tossing them in. So, if a cheap set feels cheap, everybody at the table notices. And the table comes third because a good set on a kitchen table already feels like a real game. So, let's open the box. A typical set is a case, the chips, two decks of cards, five dice, and a dealer button. The dice almost never leave the case and if those two decks are paper, they're the first thing I'd replace. So, when you compare two sets, compare the chips. How many, how heavy, and what's printed on them. Everything else is packaging. Now, count out the stacks and this is where most hosts find out they bought too many. Up to six players, 300 chips is plenty. Seven to 10 with rebuys get 500 and you only need a thousand when your game runs two tables at once. So, in a four-person game where everyone starts with a hundred chips, that's 400 on the table and the rest of a thousand never moves. Then the first hand and the detail almost nobody checks before they buy. You're playing 25 cent, 50 cent, and the white chip says one dollar right on it. You explain it once, but every new player reads the chip, not the rule. So, somebody tosses in what they think is a dollar, it's really a quarter, the pot comes up short, and two people are counting it out loud. My chip values video has the whole chart, but the buying rule is simple. The numbers on the chips have to match your game. So, you've got two clean fixes. >> [music] >> Blank chips with no number on them at all. Poker Chip Lounge sells a 300 chip stripe dice set for $75, 11 and a half grams, and you pick the colors. So, white can be a quarter and nothing on the chip argues with you. Or a set that lets you choose the values when you order. And you don't need eight colors either. A normal home game runs on three or four, so read how many of each color you get before you read the price. Now it's hour two and the chips are in everybody's hands. The box always brags about weight. Budget chips are usually 11 and 1/2 g. The heavy sets are 13 and 1/2 or 14 and ceramic and casino style clay are around 10. Heavier isn't better, it's just heavier. If you want that solid feel without paying for clay, Poker Chip Lounge's mint set is 13 and 1/2 g, 500 chips for $190. Past that, you're not paying for weight anymore. You're paying for how the chips read and how they sound. And reading matters more than people think. Somebody across the table pushes out a stack and says raise and three people lean in to figure out how much it is. Ceramic chips can have the value printed on both faces and around the edge so you can read a stack from your seat. Poker Chip Lounge's scroll ceramic does that and it's 270 for 500. It's the one kind of chip that does the explaining for you. The honest con is the price and one chip reviewer says ceramics feel a little slicker in your hand. And at that same price, there's real clay feel. Poker Chip Lounge's Milano set is 10 g compression molded clay, 500 chips in an aluminum case for 270 with values from 25 cents up. True casino chips are mostly sold only to casinos, so this is about as close as a normal store gets. Same price as ceramic, a completely different feel and neither one is wrong. If you play every week, either one is worth it because you'll handle those chips for hundreds of hours. And this is the part where I tell you about mine. That's the Monte Carlo design and it's the set I actually own. I bought a little shy of a thousand of them chip by chip from a shop called Apache Poker. I still think they're the best looking chip I found and a full table of them looks great, but I don't love how heavy they are and with four of us playing, everyone starts with stacks of 20, so half of my set lives in the case. So if you want that same look for a lot less, MRC Poker sells a 14 g Monte Carlo set, 500 chips in a silver aluminum case for $145. The same chips in a thousand set are 270, almost double, and the same 500 in a black case costs $25 more for the exact same chips. So the upgrade on the shelf is often just more of the same in a darker box. Now, the re-buy and the set I promised that solves the cards, too. KEM's vintage WSOP set is 513 and 1/2 g clay chips in a metal case that locks with a metal dealer button and two KEM decks made of 100% plastic. It's $300. The values are printed from $1 up to 500, so it fits a game where the smallest chip is a dollar or a home tournament. And it's the same company that makes the cards I recommend, so if you want both problems solved in one box, it's linked in the description with the cards. Then the night ends and two things happen. First, the count, and that's easy with three or four colors because you stack every color in the same size piles, so every pile is worth the same amount and nobody's counting single chips at midnight. Then you pick up the case. A thousand 14 g chips is about 30 lb before you add the aluminum, and you feel every pound walking to the car. So, buy the count you'll actually use. And if you already have chips you love, MRC sells the 500 aluminum case by itself for $45. So, here's what I'd buy. Up to six players, the 300 striped dice set at $75. Seven to 10, a 500 Monte Carlo at 145. A weekly game where you want the chips to read themselves, 500 ceramic or clay with 25 cent chips, around 270 to 290. And if your smallest chip is a dollar and you want the cards handled, too, the KEM set at 300. Whatever you buy, pick the values before you pay. And the last part of the night is the settle up when everybody wants to know who owes who. That's why I built HG Poker. It logs every buy-in and re-buy so the chips on the table match the money, and it takes no bets, holds no money, and moves no money. So, tell me in the comments, what set does your group use and what would you change about it? And if you haven't fixed your cards yet, my cards video is right here. >> [music]