12/26/2023 0 Comments Stacks chips![]() 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.Īs 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.However tall your stacks are, they should be uniform and easy enough for opponents to count simply by looking at them.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).They are followed in cash games, too, and thus for new players are worth knowing. These are guidelines often followed by many in tourneys. 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.įor 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.” But 20 is a convenient stack size - not too high or low, and easy for counting, too. 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. The great majority of players stack their chips in a similar way, with stacks of 20 being the standard most often employed. But for new players there are a few factors to keep in mind going in. 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. 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. 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. And for new players, it is probably worth knowing some of the standards for stacking. That said, how players stack their chips is not without meaning. The symbolism of stacks may be debatable. ![]() 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. ![]() New players may find themselves distracted by such speculations. 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. ![]() 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. 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. 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. Some players are very meticulous about lining up their stacks in perfectly constructed, uniform towers. There are varying degrees of tidiness displayed in chip stacking. 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.
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