So, you’ve played in land-based casinos. And you enjoy live dealer online casino games. But sometimes a night in with friends or games night with the family and a casual game of poker can be as much fun. Or maybe you’re stepping it up and organizing a tournament. Whatever the case, you’ll need a set of poker chips to give the whole experience a little authenticity. 

 Read on to find the best poker chip set for your game and pocket.

How Many Chips Do I Need?

How many poker chips you need depends on who’s playing. For a single table, you’ll need as few as 36–50 chips, but if you’re talking poker chip sets at the tournament level, you’re going to need anything between 300–500 multi-denominational chips.

Do I Need a Whole Set?

Again, depending on how serious you are about hosting a home game, you may want to look professional and have a full poker set. A professional set would include cards and buttons for the big and small blinds as well as the dealer, all stored in a nice carry case. But if you’re comfortable with store-bought chips and you already have the playing cards, you can pick up sleeves of chips in different quantities and qualities, depending on what you’re looking for.

What To Look For in Poker Chips

Poker chips come in different shapes, weights, sizes and colors and are made from a variety of materials. Some chips are already marked with denominations, the same as the ones represented in the best online casino games, but some are left blank so you can set your own stakes to suit the level of your players. It might be that the poker chips for home games that you need are the blank ones, then you can vary the stakes each time you play. As you set up your home game, don’t forget to clearly set out the game format and rules of the house, including the stakes you’ll be playing for.

What Are Poker Chips Made From?

There’s a long history to how poker chips are made, but for the best poker set for home games, you need to decide how much wear and tear there will be on the chips, whether you’ll be transporting or simply storing them (because some can be very heavy in large quantities) and how fussy your fellow players are.

Chips made of plastic are the cheapest and weigh in at anything up to 2 grams each. You can pick these up in most drug stores for anything between $2.50–$4.00 for a packet of 100 chips. They come mostly in red, white and blue, but probably won’t cut it with more serious players.

Imitation clay chips are just that. Imitation and still made of plastic. But they do weigh more than the plain plastic chips, up to 8 grams each, which gives them a better feel. These are also widely available and you can buy as few as 25 per sleeve for as little as $0.10 per chip.

If you’ve seen how they play poker online and want to up your own home game, consider investing in metal-filled, composite clay poker chips, which generally come as part of a set, although you can buy them separately. These are quite heavy; each chip can weigh between 11–14 grams, so if you purchase them online exclusive of shipping, just know that you’re going to incur that additional cost. The chips on their own retail at anything from $40–$300 for a deluxe set.

For a real casino experience, ceramic poker chips are the gold standard and are used in the World Series of Poker and most Las Vegas casinos. Like their metal counterparts, they click rather than clang and come in more colors than other versions. These chips cost between $0.40–$0.75 each; sets can cost up to $1,400, but they will last you a lifetime.

You can also buy custom poker chip sets. If you play regularly and really want to impress folks, you can invent your own casino name to emblazon on your chips and carry case.

Carry Case or Storage Box?

Now, what are you to put your home chips in? You may want to match your investment in the chips with the kind of case or box you choose to carry or store them in. Lightweight, cheap plastic chips only need a lightweight aluminum or vinyl case which will set you back around $50. 

If you’re spending more on composite clay or ceramic chips and they’re not part of a set that comes with its own case, consider where you will be using them. If they’re staying at home, you can buy racks or boxes and even make a display feature of them in a games room, but if you’re moving them between game venues, you’re going to need something with a strong handle and reinforced corners. And depending on how many chips you’re carrying, because of the weight, you’ll need to divide them into batches that you can carry.

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