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White is one, red is five, green is twenty-five, black is a hundred. Those four colors cover almost every home game ever played, and they are the same values used in cardrooms across the United States — which is the entire reason to follow them. A set that uses the standard colors never needs explaining. Build a stack in the tool above and it tells you what the pile in front of you is actually worth.
Every standard color and its value, casino and tournament
Build a stack and see the total as you go
How many denominations a home game actually needs
Chip values
White
Worth 1
Red
Worth 5
Blue
Worth 10
Green
Worth 25
Black
Worth 100
Purple
Worth 500
Yellow
Worth 1,000
This stack is worth
260
33 chips
These are the colors every cardroom in the United States uses, and what most retail sets are moulded to. Follow them and nobody at your table has to ask what a chip is worth.
The colors below are near-universal in United States cardrooms and are what most retail chip sets are moulded to. Denominations above a hundred rarely appear in a home game.
Color
White
Value
1
Where you see it
Every set. The unit chip, and what small blinds are made of
Color
Red
Value
5
Where you see it
Every set. The workhorse chip in a low-stakes game
Color
Blue
Value
10
Where you see it
Common in casino sets, often skipped at home
Color
Green
Value
25
Where you see it
Every set. The chip that makes a stack look like a stack
Color
Black
Value
100
Where you see it
Every set. Usually the largest chip a home game needs
Color
Purple
Value
500
Where you see it
Casino sets and larger tournament sets
Color
Yellow
Value
1,000
Where you see it
Casino sets, and the top denomination in most tournaments
Denominations are not free. Every extra color is another value to remember, another chip to make change for, and another thing to count at the end of the night.
Stake
$5 buy-in
Colors to use
White 1, red 5
Starting stack
20 white, 6 red — 50 total
Stake
$20 buy-in
Colors to use
White 1, red 5, green 25
Starting stack
20 white, 8 red, 4 green — 160
Stake
$50 buy-in
Colors to use
White 1, red 5, green 25, black 100
Starting stack
20 white, 8 red, 4 green, 1 black — 260
Stake
Tournament
Colors to use
White 25, red 100, green 500, black 1,000
Starting stack
8 white, 10 red, 6 green, 4 black — 10,200
Nothing forces a white chip to be worth one. What makes the standard worth following is that everybody already knows it: a player who has been to a cardroom, watched poker on television, or played at somebody else's kitchen table will read your stack correctly without being told. Invent your own scheme and you spend the first twenty minutes of every session explaining it, and somebody still gets it wrong in a big pot.
One, five, twenty-five, one hundred. Those four denominations cover any buy-in a home game is likely to use, and the ratios between them are the ones people can do arithmetic with under pressure. Five whites make a red, five reds make a green, four greens make a black. Nobody has to think about it, which is exactly the point.
In United States cardrooms blue is usually ten. In some European rooms and in a lot of cheap retail sets it is anything from two to twenty, and some sets skip it entirely. If your set has blue chips and you are not sure, either declare the value out loud before the first hand or leave them in the box — an ambiguous denomination is worse than one fewer color.
A five-hundred-chip set arrives with five or six colors and the instinct is to use all of them. Resist it. At a five or ten dollar buy-in you need two denominations, maybe three. The extra colors do not make the game more serious; they make every pot slower, because somebody always has to break a large chip and wait for change while the action is on them.
In a tournament everyone buys in for the same amount and receives the same stack, and the chips have no cash value at all — they are a scoreboard. That is why tournament denominations are large and round: 25, 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000. A ten thousand chip starting stack for a twenty dollar buy-in is normal and means nothing except that the blinds have room to climb.
As the blinds rise, the small denominations stop mattering and start getting in the way. Coloring up means trading them in: everybody hands over their twenty-fives, receives the equivalent in hundreds, and the small chips leave the table. Do it at a break rather than mid-hand, and round odd amounts up to the nearest chip rather than making somebody a change for their last twenty-five.
The color scheme did not start with poker. Casino floors use the same values across blackjack, craps and roulette so that a chip is worth the same amount wherever you carry it, which is why searching for blackjack chip colors turns up the same list. Roulette is the exception: its chips are color-coded by player, not by value, and are worthless anywhere but that table.
Every set eventually meets a game with more players than it was built for, or a night where somebody rebuys three times. The usual fixes are bad: adding a new color mid-game, or letting somebody play with a written IOU. The alternative is to stop using physical chips for the stack entirely — deal real cards and track the chips on everyone's phone, which has no limit on players, denominations or rebuys, and no chips to count at the end.
FAQ
01
White 1, red 5, blue 10, green 25, black 100, purple 500 and yellow 1,000. The first four cover almost every home game.
02
Ten in United States cardrooms. It is the least consistent color internationally, so declare its value before the first hand or leave it out of the game.
03
Twenty-five. It is the standard quarter-of-a-hundred chip in every cardroom set and the largest denomination most low-stakes home games need.
04
Two or three. A five dollar buy-in needs white and red; a fifty dollar buy-in wants green and black as well. More colors slow the game down without adding anything.
05
No. Everyone buys in for the same amount and receives the same stack, so the chips are a scoreboard. A 10,000 starting stack for a $20 buy-in is completely normal.
06
Trading small denominations in for larger ones as the blinds rise, so the low-value chips leave the table. Do it at a break, and round odd amounts up rather than making change.
07
You can, and it usually costs you time. The value of the standard scheme is that nobody has to be told it. If you do change it, write the values down where everyone can see them.
08
Yes. Casinos use one color scheme across the floor so a chip is worth the same everywhere. Roulette is the exception — those chips are coded by player, not by value.
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