Playing Poker Tournaments at Home

What Equipment is Required?

Tables
You need some type of surface to play the game on. A table used to play poker on can be simple and handy such as a kitchen table or a folding card table or more elaborate such as dedicated poker tables or fancy custom poker tables. As in most things in life the price goes up as the tables improve in quality. Using the kitchen table costs nothing, dedicated poker tables cost anywhere from $100 to $550, while high end custom tables can cost in excess of $3,000

Cards
Needless to say, to play poker you need poker cards. This is not a problem as there are dozens of standard poker card decks available on the market from which to choose. Because the cards will have to be changed after use (when nicks, folds, scratches, and so on mar the surface) you will need to buy more than one deck of cards. The number of decks of cards you buy will depend upon a number of things such as: the number of tables you have playing at a tournament and the types of players playing the game (close buddies are not as fussy as strangers in regards to having flawless cards to play with). In small quantities decks of cards can be bought at department stores for about $2.50 a deck. While to buy enough cards to host a tournament you will likely have to go to a gaming store and buy in bulk, a set of 144 decks cost about $360. Wherever you get your cards just make sure you have enough decks so you can change them as required.

Poker Chips
The main purpose of poker chips is to enable the players to quickly determine the status of the game. Poker chips are just tokens that represent a quantity of money that a player has, the tokens don't have to be standard poker chips, some informal money tournaments have been played using simple handy materials such as rolls of quarters borrowed from the house. The quantity of chips you require, and the quality of the chips you decide to get depends largely on personal preference. Whatever you use as tokens (and as stated you can make do with just about anything) make sure the players understand the value of whatever it is you are using.

As you are inviting others to play poker you likely will want the prestige of having a form of formal poker chips for them to use. Poker chips are available in a variety of styles ranging from cheap lightweight plastic chips to heavy clay chips that can be custom made for you. The low cost plastic poker chips that are available in department stores are all that is required for informal home games. When you go to the trouble of organizing a tournament, or for hosts that wish to play using better equipment, the purchase of clay chips is desired. Clay chips are available at gaming shops and are available in various weights (from 9.5 grams to 13.5 grams), textures, and colors. A lightweight clay "diamond" chip weighing 9.5 grams would be considered the minimum quality chip for tournament play while for a more upscale feel a heaver and smoother 11.5 gram or 13.5 gram chip should be considered (as they have a better feel in your hand and slide much easier). The buying of poker chips is a personal decision and a large part in deciding what type of chip to purchase depends on: how much money you are prepared to spend on this "investment", how great your desire to impress the players, and the expectations of the players as to what kind of equipment they expect you to have.

When I was a tournament host I compromised and bought a less expensive clay chip that I then had customized. I did this so that I would never hear someone claiming that some other player had brought their own chips to the table and padded their stack. My feeling was that the extra security of the custom chips was worth the expence to avoid that potential headache. To make my chips a little more versatile I bought chips without any values on them. This allows me the option of having the red chips represent any denomination I want depending on what tournament I am running. There was one other consideration I kept in mind, because one player in our group is color-blind, I stayed with basic bold colors so that he is better able to tell the different chip values at a glance.

The number of chips to purchase will depend mainly on the number of tables and/or players you expect play at one time. Small one table tournaments having eight or less players could get buy with a basic 300 chip set. If you are expecting that more players will be involved you should buy more chips. It would be better to have 500 chips for games involving up to ten players and 1000 chips for games or tournaments of up to two dozen players. If you buy 1,500 chips you can easily handle up to 40 players (and in a pinch you could likely handle few more players if the need arose).

Most games you will want to host will be adequately served with a basic four color chip set as these usually come with more than enough chip colors for your needs. A good starting point could be a chip set containing 40% red, 40% green, 10% black and 10% purple chips.

Other Accessories
As you are setting up to host a poker event you may decide to purchase other accessories such as; automatic card shufflers, card shoes, and buttons to show the blind and/or dealer positions. While not necessary some hosts like to accessorize as they feel it makes their hosting efforts look a little more professional.