Mini poker chips in convenient plastic tubes are easy to transport or stash in a drawer, while plastic chips that come in a lightweight plastic case are ideal for traveling. Plastic poker chips with interlocking grooves are easy to stack. Poker chips imprinted with graphics, such as colorful palm trees or the neon lights of Vegas, are a fun. Put three fingers on the side of one pile, and the thumb on the side of the other pile. Gently squeeze the chips together. Put your fore finger in-between the two piles and run it upwards causing the chips to interlock one by one from alternate piles. Push them together into one big stack, and then separate them, ready to go again. Download this Free Photo about Human hand holding stack of poker chips, and discover more than 5 Million Professional Stock Photos on Freepik.

As a tournament reporter for many years, I’ve spent a lot of time eyeing players’ chip stacks, enough to develop all sorts of ideas and opinions about the significance (or lack thereof) of how a player chooses to stack his or her chips.

There are varying degrees of tidiness displayed in chip stacking. Some players are very meticulous about lining up their stacks in perfectly constructed, uniform towers. Meanwhile others tend always to have a few strays laying around, or even have “dirty stacks” with chips of different denominations mixed together in a single column.

It’s tempting to perform a kind of “profiling” simply from the way a player stacks his or her chips, which like other assumptions based on, say, clothing, appearance, or the player’s sex or age might indicate something meaningful about a person’s playing style. Or not.

We might be tempted to place the guy who lines up the markings on the edges of the chips so all are perfectly aligned in a category of “tight” players who never make any moves without having calculated risk-reward ratios to the nth degree. And the guy with messy chips in differently-sized stacks that always appear on the verge of toppling over might be thought of as more “loose” with his calls and raises.

New players may find themselves distracted by such speculations. But more often than not when it comes to stacking and handling chips, they’re going to be more focused on what they are doing with their own chips than with worrying about how others are stacking theirs.

Stacking Standards

The symbolism of stacks may be debatable. That said, how players stack their chips is not without meaning. And for new players, it is probably worth knowing some of the standards for stacking.

There’s a whole generation of players now who got their first experience playing poker online which means when they do finally try playing in a live poker room the whole idea of having to deal with chips might well be altogether new. They might know all about starting hand selection, the importance of position, and the odds of drawing to a flush or straight, but stacking chips isn’t necessarily something they’ve faced before.

It might seem like a trivial thing to learn, and in truth it doesn’t take long to become familiar with how to stack chips. But for new players there are a few factors to keep in mind going in.

The great majority of players stack their chips in a similar way, with stacks of 20 being the standard most often employed. Some prefer building 30- or 40- chip high stacks (or more), while others like to stack them in 10s or even in lots of short stacks of five. But 20 is a convenient stack size — not too high or low, and easy for counting, too.

What Are the Rules?

Most cash games and tournaments have a rule in place acknowledging the necessity of allowing opponents to be able to see your stack clearly enough to have an idea what you have in front of you, although the rule generally still allows players certain freedoms with their chip caretaking.

For instance, in the Poker Tournament Directors Association’s most recent set of TDA Rules currently used in many tournament series, there’s a rule noting that “Players are entitled to a reasonable estimation of an opponent’s chip count; thus chips should be kept in countable stacks.” The rule goes on to say “The TDA recommends clean stacks in multiples of 20 as a standard” and that “Players must keep higher denomination chips visible and identifiable at all times.”

These are guidelines often followed by many in tourneys. They are followed in cash games, too, and thus for new players are worth knowing.

• Chip stacks don’t have to be 20 chips tall, but keeping stacks of 20 (or multiples thereof) is what the TDA “recommends” (as do others).
• However tall your stacks are, they should be uniform and easy enough for opponents to count simply by looking at them.
• Higher denomination chips always should be visible, too, and not hidden behind lower ones or in other ways — that also is part of making it possible for opponents to make that “reasonable estimation” of what you have when a hand begins or at any point during the play of a hand.

As a tourney reporter, it’s always handy for me when players follow these guidelines as it makes the job of counting their chips and reporting those counts much easier. Take a look at the picture to the right. The yellow chips are worth 5,000 each and the grays are 1,000. How many chips does that player have? How long did it take you to count them? (See below for the answer.)

Some of my colleagues occasionally complain about players not stacking chips neatly or in amounts other than 20. Of course, the players’ obligation to each other and the fairness of the game is certainly greater than their obligation to reporters. It’s essential that everyone be able to play hands knowing how the stacks compare because such knowledge directly affects the strategy employed when deciding whether or not to fold, call, raise, or shove all in.

Conclusion

A lot of times new players don’t want to give away the fact that they aren’t experienced when they sit down in a live game for the first time. It is easier said than done, but inexperienced players shouldn’t worry too much about being pegged as a newbie. Everyone was new to the game once, and if you can try to focus on playing hands as well as you can and not fretting too much over making “rookie mistakes,” you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more while gathering experience to help you going forward.

Stacking Poker Chips One Hand Games

Know, though, that if you stack your chips in 20, keep your stacks relatively orderly, and be sure to keep the big chips up front and visible, you won’t be drawing attention to yourself as someone unfamiliar with how to stack chips.

Now your hand might shake a little the first time you grab some of those chips to raise with your pocket aces and a couple might spill off the top, but you’ll learn to deal with that in time. And as you gather more experience, you’ll gather more chips, too, and thus more chances to stack them.

(With those neat stacks of 20, it is easy to see at a glance in the photo that the player has 680,000 chips. Bonus question: How many chips are in the photo at the top? Yellow = 1,000, red = 5,000; blue = 10,000)

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This article concludes my three-part survey of the rules and procedures surrounding poker chips in brick-and-mortar casinos. In the first part, I discussed the complicated relationship between chips and money, chip colors, stacking chips, and other rules regarding chips. In the second part, I covered some things to think about when calling, betting, or raising with chips.

Today I want to finish the discussion by considering a variety of other chip-related topics. All of the following points apply equally to tournaments and cash games.

The “oversize chip rule”

It often happens that you want to call a bet but don’t have a combination of chips that will match it exactly. For example, you want to limp in by just calling the amount of the $2 big blind, but you have only $5 chips. If you say nothing and just put out one red chip, it’s not clear whether your intention is to just call (expecting the dealer to give you $3 in change) or to raise to a $5 bet.

The “oversize chip rule” (a.k.a. the “one chip rule”) resolves this ambiguity in advance by declaring that a single chip larger than needed to constitute a call is nevertheless deemed to be just a call unless you have verbally announced a raise before putting the chip out.

Note that this isn’t an issue when the overage is not enough to constitute a raise anyway, e.g., if you call a $4 bet with a $5 chip. The rule is also not invoked when you put out more than one chip. For example, if you are facing a bet of $15 and put out two green ($25) chips, nobody could mistakenly think that you intended to just call. Where there is no ambiguity, there is no need for a rule to resolve it.

Once in a while, a player new to casino poker believes that this rule should not be applied if he has small-denomination chips such that he could have used them if his intention were to call rather than raise. For example, he puts out a $5 as the first player to act after the blinds in a $1-$2 no-limit game. When the dealer, following the rule, declares this to be just a $2 call, the player might protest, pointing to the large stack of $1 chips that he could have used if he had wanted to just call.

This argument is never considered valid. The rule goes by what was actually done, not by what could have been done.

Handling chips

I’m not a germophobe, but I do try to keep an awareness of which objects in my environment are reasonably clean and which are not. Casino chips, to put it bluntly, are filthy.

Back in 2007, BLUFF hired a microbiology lab to analyze what bacteria could be found on poker chips from Vegas casinos. The results might turn your stomach. I prefer handling chips as little as possible, and advise you to do the same. Nobody knows for sure, but it stands to reason that poker chips could serve as a vector for transmitting cold and flu viruses from one player to the entire table. I, for one, would like to minimize the risk of being on the receiving end of such a “gift.”

Chip tricks

You will often see poker veterans playing with their chips in interesting ways. They will shuffle chip stacks one-handed, run them over their knuckles, flip them like tiddlywinks, bounce them perfectly onto a target, and so on.

Though I can appreciate the time and effort it takes to master such tricks, I have no interest in learning to do them myself, and my advice to you is not to waste your time and energy, either. It’s a distraction from what you should be paying attention to. Also, you may unconsciously give off “tells” this way. Chip-shuffling players are notorious for slowing down — without being aware of it — when they have a monster hand.

Finally, if you spend much time in a large poker tournament room, the “white noise” of hundreds of players mindlessly shuffling their chips may remind you of cicada season and make you want to vow not to contribute to the din.

Small denominations

When playing a in a $1/$2 game, I like keeping at least five or ten $1 chips in my stack at all times. That way, I can bet any exact amount I want to without having to make a verbal announcement of the amount, or call another player’s bet without forcing the dealer to make change for me in the middle of a hand. The reason for that is just that I don’t want to be distracted by such details when I’m trying to focus on what my opponents are doing and making my best decisions.

If I have less than five or ten small chips, I’ll rebuild my supply by paying a couple of round of blinds with larger chips and getting change from the dealer. This, of course, isn’t a rule or even a standard practice or point of etiquette — just a practical hint that you might find helpful.

Making change

Stacking Poker Chips One Handle

Sometimes another player or even the dealer will ask you to make change — e.g., exchange five $1 chips for one $5 chip, or whatever. Helping out this way when asked is not only perfectly acceptable, but a nice bit of social lubrication to keep the game friendly and moving efficiently. Just be sure that you count both the chips you’re giving and those you’re receiving, so that both parties concur that the trade is being done fairly.

Particularly when doing an exchange with another player, be as open as you can be about the counting of chips, both verbally and visually. That way, neither the other players nor casino security personnel observing the game through overhead cameras are given any reason to think that unethical “chip dumping” is taking place.

Collecting chips

Many players like to keep poker chips as souvenirs of their visit to a casino. Not only is this legal, but the casinos love it when you do this.

When they put into circulation chips with colorful designs commemorating this, that, and the other thing, they earnestly hope that you will take the chips home without cashing them out, resulting in pure profit to the casino. It’s the same principle as the post office printing stamps that they hope you will purchase, then place in an album rather than on an envelope, giving them revenue without having to provide a service in exchange.

If you like collecting chips, feel free to do so. It can be fun to see how many different ones you can accumulate. Be aware, however, that, like most collecting hobbies, it can suck you in and drain your bank account if you let it get out of control.

Whew! Three whole articles just about poker chips! I hope it has been a worthwhile excursion into a subject that isn’t discussed much, but is actually central to how casino poker games operate.

Next we will move on to tackle another category of poker table equipment, also sometimes confusing to the new player — all of the many forms of “buttons” that are used.

Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.

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