Poker Chip Values Explained: What Each Color Should Be Worth

If your white chip is worth a dollar, your 25-cent, 50-cent game is broken before the first card comes out. Nobody can post a small blind and the first pot turns into a pile of change nobody can make. And that's the value almost every new host gives white because it's what the casinos do. So, by the end of this video, you'll have one chip value chart that fits your blinds and your buy-in. You'll know how many colors you actually need, and you'll know which color in your set you'll probably never touch. Now, here's where white is a dollar comes from. In a casino, white or blue is usually a dollar, red is five, green is 25, black is 100, purple is 500, and orange is 1,000. But, that's a habit, not a law. New Jersey actually writes those colors into its casino regulations, while Nevada has no color rule at all, which is why a Las Vegas dollar chip can be white, blue, or gray. So, if the casinos can't agree on it, your kitchen table definitely doesn't have to. So, picture the first hand. You copied the casino, so white is a dollar. The blinds are 25 cents and 50 cents, and the player left of the button reaches for a chip that's worth a quarter, and there isn't one. So, they throw in a whole white and ask for change. The next player does the same thing, and now the middle is full of chips nobody can split. And the fix is one rule. Your smallest chip is worth your small blind. In a 25-cent, 50-cent game, that makes white 25 cents. And once white is set, the rest of the chart almost builds itself. The big blind is two whites. Red is a dollar, so four whites trade for one red. Green is five dollars, which is five reds, and black is 25, which is five greens. Every color is worth four or five of the one below it, so making change is always easy, and nobody needs a calculator to figure out a raise. Now, here's the argument that starts at almost every first game. Wait, is red a dollar or 50 cents? It usually starts because somebody wanted a chip for every number. A 50-cent chip sounds useful since that's the big blind, but two whites already do that job, and an extra color is just one more thing to mix up. So, you rarely need more than three or four colors in play. White, red, and green do almost all of the work, and black mostly shows up when somebody rebuys. Which means the common five-color 500 set has one color you'll probably never use. A lot of these sets come with 100 each of white, red, blue, green, and black. Give four of those colors a value, and the fifth one, usually blue, just stays in the case. And that's fine. It's not wasted money. It's a spare color for the night your game outgrows the chart. So, what does a $50 buy-in actually look like on the table? 12 whites, 12 reds, and seven greens. That's 31 chips, and it adds up to exactly 50. The whites cover the blinds for a few trips around the table. The reds handle most of the betting, and the greens are there for the big pots. And if somebody rebuy is you hand them two black chips. How many chips each player gets and how far one set really stretches has its own video, and I'll link how many poker chips do you need at the end. And there's a 10-second test for any chart, whatever stakes you play. Your buy-in should be around 100 big blinds, and $50 at a 50-cent big blind is exactly 100. Then your biggest chip in play should be about half a buy-in. So, a rebuy is only two chips. A $25 black does that. If your top chip is worth more than the whole buy-in, it'll never leave the case. And if it's tiny, every stack turns into a tower nobody can count. Now, the argument that a values card stops cold. The bet is a dollar, and somebody tosses in a single green chip without saying a word. Did they just raise the five? Under Robert's rules of poker, no. One bigger chip with no comment is only a call, and they get their change back. If you want to raise, you say raise before the chip hits the felt, and half the table won't know that until you show them. So, put one line on a card next to the chip tray, white 25 cents, red $1, green five, black 25. Read it out loud before the first hand, and nobody has to ask again. And here's the mistake that catches hosts who did everything else right. A lot of sets come with the values printed right on the chips. One popular 500 set lists 150 whites marked $1, 150 reds marked five, then green 25, blue 100, and black 500. So, in your 25-cent, 50-cent game, a red chip that literally says $5 is worth one. And at the end of the night, somebody always holds one up and says, "But it says five." So, either the card on the table wins every time, or you buy a set with no numbers on it at all. It's the same problem when a friend brings their own chips to help out. Their red might be worth five at their house, and now you've got two reds on the table that mean different things. The card room solved that one simply. Chips from another room don't play. So at home everybody uses the house set and anything extra stays in the bag. >> [music] >> So what happens when the blinds go up? In a cash game they don't. Tournament blinds climb every level so tournaments color up and raise the small chips off the table. But a cash game keeps the same blinds all night so your whites never stop being useful. And if one player ends up buried in whites they just trade four of them for a red at the bank. The only time you change the chart is when the whole group moves up. Say to 50 cent $1 then white becomes 50 cents, red stays a dollar and you write a new card. And here's one more reason the smallest chip should match the small blind. Two players tied, the pot gets split and there's one white chip left over. Who gets it? Robert's rules says you break the odd chip down to the smallest chip in the game and it goes to the first winner to the left of the button. With 25 cent whites that left over is a quarter. But if your smallest chip is a dollar, now you're arguing over a whole dollar that nobody can split. The full split pot ruling is in our how to deal video. Then the night ends and every stack has to turn back into dollars. Someone's got a tower of reds, someone's got a pile of whites and two people swap chips three hours ago. And the fastest way to count is by color. Whites in stacks of four so every stack is a dollar, reds in stacks of five, greens in stacks of four so every stack is 20. But even a clean count is where the last argument of the night starts because now somebody has to work out who pays who. That's why I built HG Poker. It keeps track of every buy-in and rebuy and when the chips are counted it shows who owes who. It takes no bets, holds no money and moves no money. So tell me in the comments, what's your white chip worth? And if you're not sure how many chips to hand each player, watch How Many Poker Chips Do You Need Next. >> [music]