The advanced ICM Calculator can be used to determine ICM and chip chop distributions for deals in tournaments and simplifies poker tournament deal negotiations.
Just enter stack sizes and prize money for up to 9 players and hit 'Calculate ICM Distribution'. A more detailed description for the ICM Calculator is below.
Standard InputAdvanced InputStacks and prizes
These poker chips for home games are made of heavy plastic weighing 8 grams a chip or so. Cool imitation clay poker chips for home games are generally marketed as 'super diamond chips.They can be.
- A fold equity calculator is a powerful tool that you can use to see how often your opponent must fold when you are shoving your stack. Before you go all-in with your next semi-bluff, or go all-in preflop with a bluff, use this tool to make sure your play is +EV!
- The terms 'poker odds calculator' and 'poker win percentage calculator' might seem like a bit of a mouthful, but using one - such as CardsChat's offering above - is actually pretty simple.
Stacks and prizes
Raw Output and ICM Results
How to use the advanced ICM Calculator
Enter the Data
We'll just focus on the Standard Input mode for now:
- Stack Sizes: Enter the stack sizes for each player, leave fields blank if you're running a calculation for less than 9 players.
- Prizes: Enter the prizes for each position. Please only use decimals. Prizes will be sorted descending when calculating.
- Money set aside: If you want to you can set aside some money which still will be played for after the deal. This amount must be smaller than the difference between 1st and 2nd place.
Once you're done, hit the button 'Calculate ICM Distribution' and the Poker Deal Calculator does it's magic.
Prize Money Distribution
The ICM calculator shows how much money each player receives according to the Independent Chip Model (or ICM).
It's also possible to show how much a chip chop deal pays out or even how much a mix of both deals pays out. This can be done via fine tuning. More about fine tuning below.
Below the table is a link (Shareable link to this calculation) which can be used to share this calculation. Any possible fine tuning will be shared as well.
ICM Finish Distribution
The ICM calculator also provides a detailed table which shows how likely it is, each player finishes in any position. This calculation is based purely on ICM and the stack sizes.
Advanced ICM Calculator Options
There are some options that make this ICM Deal Calculator stand out a bit. Let's go through them.
Advanced Input
The Advanced Input doesn't look very advanced, it's just a text box. But copy-pasting chip counts and prizes from other sources is sometimes easier than manually entering all the information.
- Stack Sizes: The advanced input scans the first lines until the first blank line for stack sizes. It also supports player names. Just use the format 'name stack-size'. If you don't use a name, the calculator will assign the usual 'Player x' names.
- Prizes: After the first blank line the advanced input scans for prizes until the next blank line.
- Options: Below that are options – all of which can be set when fine tuning (see below). Meaning: don't adjust these options here.
Fine Tuning
When you tick the checkbox 'Fine tune results' you get a set of options to adjust the results of the calculation. Those are the options:
- Allow chip chop excess: When calculating chip chop deals (see below) there can be rare occurrences where the deal allots more money to first place then the payouts would. This happens when there is a single huge chip leader. Default option for this calculator is to not allow such a deal. This calculator redistributes any excess allotments proportionally between the other players. If the checkbox is ticked, deals which allow more than first place money for any player are possible.
- Round results: You can choose to round the results to the nearest multiple of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 or 1,000. If the sum of the rounded payouts doesn't equal the sum of prizes, the rounding error will be added or deducted to or from the player where the error has the least impact.
- ICM or Chip-Chop: By default the calculator provides a pure ICM deal. But it's also possible to calculate a chip chop deal (just move the slider to the far right). It is also possible to calculate a weighted average of both deals. Since ICM deals usually favor short stacks and chip chop deals favor big stacks, sometimes it might be a good idea, to mix both deals. But in general chip chop deals are a rather bad idea for almost all players involved.
Fine tuning the individual payouts
When fine tuning is enabled you'll see pluses and minuses pop up in the prize money distribution table. With those buttons you can manually adjust the payouts for each player.
Clicking plus or minus adjusts the payout for the player by (very roughly) 1 percent. In return the payout for each other player is adjusted accordingly, so that the sum of the payouts always stays the same.
You can use this option, when one player wants at least so and so much when negotiating a deal. When negotiating a deal online you use the shareable link option to send other players a link to the specific adjustment.
Question, remarks, suggestions, bugs? Please leave a comment below!
Relevant Resources
- What is ICM? A detailed explanation of ICM.
- Independent Chip Model on Wikipedia
Table Of Contents
The age-old saying goes something like this: 'The guy who invented gambling was brilliant, but the guy who invented chips was a genius.'
The reason behind this saying is that chips remove from gambling the real world of money.
Gamblers tend to have very short memories. Once they purchase chips, they easily forget their real world value, making losses on the green felt seem relatively painless — at least until they go to cash out.
Home poker has largely embraced this concept.
Games that used to be played with silver change and paper money are now often played with the best poker chips.
If you're hosting a home game, you may well be considering the purchase of a cool poker chip set.
The best poker chip sets contain:
- A set of 500 poker chips
- Poker chips in three or four colors for different denominations
- A deal button
- A Big Blind button
- A Small Blind button
- Two decks of French cards
A poker chip set for home like this should be enough for your typical game of one to two tables.
Finding the best poker chips for your home games depends on your tastes and your budget.
Here's a summary of what's out there to help you find just the right chips for your game. To get a really good sense of all of your options, I suggest that you check out the online stores that specialize in poker supplies.
It's Like a Home Game. But OnlineDiscover the most beginner-friendly games of poker on the internet.
Play NowCheap Poker Chips: Plastic Chips
At the very lowest end of the chip market are the very lightweight, 2 gram or so, thin plastic poker chips that many of us played with as kids or in high school and college.
They are typically sold in packs of 100, often in red, white, and blue.
These are the chips available for purchase in nearly every large pharmacy and in groceries, right in the same area as the packs of playing cards.
They'll run you $2.50 to $3.95 or so. If you look around you might find a really inexpensive version of them in the dollar stores — selling for $1.00.
You can buy plastic poker chips online, too. In these case, these are your best options:
- 100 Poker Chips by RINCO(Red and Blue)
- 600 Poker Chips by U.S. Toy Co.(Red, White, Blue)
These cheap plastic poker chips are fine in a pinch, or with young or inexperienced players who have never been to a public poker room or casino.
But they feel and sound so much cheaper than what you'll find in a casino or other public poker room, that they may be inadequate for your more serious players.
Imitation Clay Poker Chips
One step up, and what I first purchased back in the early '90s when I started playing in casinos around the United States, are solidly colored, imitation clay poker chips.
These poker chips for home games are made of heavy plastic weighing 8 grams a chip or so.
Cool imitation clay poker chips for home games are generally marketed as 'super diamond chips.'
They can be purchased online for between $.06 and $.10 per chip, and sell in 'sleeves' of 25 single color chips.
These are the best poker chips of this kind:
These imitation clay poker chips are perfectly adequate for your home game, especially if you are running multi-table tournaments and want to be able to afford a lot of chips for a relatively little amount of money.
Since they lack any striping, spotting or design, some players might not prefer them.
But I've used mine in large tournaments and in home games for 25 years and never had a complaint (at least not to my face).
Clay Composite Chips
Slightly more expensive, and by far the most common chips that are sold to poker players today, are the metal filled, clay composite chips, with a myriad of different designs, strips, and spots.
Clay poker chips are usually sold as part of chip set, including an inexpensive aluminium carrying case.
These can also be purchased in sleeves of 25 from some companies, but are more typically sold in units of 500 or 1,000 as part of a poker chip set for home games.
These clay composite chips come in a large range of prices.
The 500-chip sets, for example, can be purchased online for anywhere from $39 or so up to $300 (not including shipping), based on the quality, design, and weight of the chip. Each chip weighs anywhere from 11 to 14 grams.
If you are looking for the best poker chips and you want to top chip set for home games, pick one of these. You can't go wrong with any of them.
I've noticed that at the very bottom of that price range, the clay composite chips tend to be of unacceptably poor quality.
I once purchased a 1,000-chip set for $90 and paid $45 to ship them (they're heavy, and shipping is generally expensive). The chips arrived with 20 red chips equaling the height of only 19 white chips.
They had many other defects in them as well.
I had to send them back for a refund — and got stuck with one way of the shipping.
If you are ordering these metal-filled chips, then, I recommend you order no cheaper chip than the ones selling for about $150 for 1,000.
Customized Ceramic Poker Chips
The next step up are the Ceramic poker chips that sell for about $.40-$.75 or so each.
Nevada Jacks is the most popular brand of these chips. These also come in sets of 500 or 1,000.
A nice poker set of the best home poker chips in ceramic is known for their brilliant colors and sharp detail.
These are the best poker chips to buy. They are not metal filled, and they don't make the metal clanging sound when they bump together.
Players rave about them.
The most expensive, regularly produced variety of chips are the casino-quality clay chips made by the Paulson company, typified by the Top Hat and Cane design.
These chips cost roughly $1.25 a chip, or from $1,100 to $1,400 for a set of 1,000.
If you want your home poker chips to be just like those in a casino and you don't mind paying for them, these are the ones for you.
Home Poker Tourney Chip Calculator
The best ceramic poker chips for home games are:
- Brybelly 500 Count Nevada Jack Poker Set - 10 Gram Premium Casino Grade Ceramic Chips with Aluminum Case
There is another option to consider.
Some chip manufacturers will customize your chips with your own design.
These can come as a 'hot stamped' imprint, as a printed label that is permanently affixed to the chip, or in the case ceramic chips the design can be built into the chip itself.
Prices for this option vary widely, so shop around if this interests you.
Poker Chip Cases
Keep in mind that you'll almost certainly want a case in which to store and transport your poker chip ser. There are a few options in this department as well.
Table Of Contents
The age-old saying goes something like this: 'The guy who invented gambling was brilliant, but the guy who invented chips was a genius.'
The reason behind this saying is that chips remove from gambling the real world of money.
Gamblers tend to have very short memories. Once they purchase chips, they easily forget their real world value, making losses on the green felt seem relatively painless — at least until they go to cash out.
Home poker has largely embraced this concept.
Games that used to be played with silver change and paper money are now often played with the best poker chips.
If you're hosting a home game, you may well be considering the purchase of a cool poker chip set.
The best poker chip sets contain:
- A set of 500 poker chips
- Poker chips in three or four colors for different denominations
- A deal button
- A Big Blind button
- A Small Blind button
- Two decks of French cards
A poker chip set for home like this should be enough for your typical game of one to two tables.
Finding the best poker chips for your home games depends on your tastes and your budget.
Here's a summary of what's out there to help you find just the right chips for your game. To get a really good sense of all of your options, I suggest that you check out the online stores that specialize in poker supplies.
It's Like a Home Game. But OnlineDiscover the most beginner-friendly games of poker on the internet.
Play NowCheap Poker Chips: Plastic Chips
At the very lowest end of the chip market are the very lightweight, 2 gram or so, thin plastic poker chips that many of us played with as kids or in high school and college.
They are typically sold in packs of 100, often in red, white, and blue.
These are the chips available for purchase in nearly every large pharmacy and in groceries, right in the same area as the packs of playing cards.
They'll run you $2.50 to $3.95 or so. If you look around you might find a really inexpensive version of them in the dollar stores — selling for $1.00.
You can buy plastic poker chips online, too. In these case, these are your best options:
- 100 Poker Chips by RINCO(Red and Blue)
- 600 Poker Chips by U.S. Toy Co.(Red, White, Blue)
These cheap plastic poker chips are fine in a pinch, or with young or inexperienced players who have never been to a public poker room or casino.
But they feel and sound so much cheaper than what you'll find in a casino or other public poker room, that they may be inadequate for your more serious players.
Imitation Clay Poker Chips
One step up, and what I first purchased back in the early '90s when I started playing in casinos around the United States, are solidly colored, imitation clay poker chips.
These poker chips for home games are made of heavy plastic weighing 8 grams a chip or so.
Cool imitation clay poker chips for home games are generally marketed as 'super diamond chips.'
They can be purchased online for between $.06 and $.10 per chip, and sell in 'sleeves' of 25 single color chips.
These are the best poker chips of this kind:
These imitation clay poker chips are perfectly adequate for your home game, especially if you are running multi-table tournaments and want to be able to afford a lot of chips for a relatively little amount of money.
Since they lack any striping, spotting or design, some players might not prefer them.
But I've used mine in large tournaments and in home games for 25 years and never had a complaint (at least not to my face).
Clay Composite Chips
Slightly more expensive, and by far the most common chips that are sold to poker players today, are the metal filled, clay composite chips, with a myriad of different designs, strips, and spots.
Clay poker chips are usually sold as part of chip set, including an inexpensive aluminium carrying case.
These can also be purchased in sleeves of 25 from some companies, but are more typically sold in units of 500 or 1,000 as part of a poker chip set for home games.
These clay composite chips come in a large range of prices.
The 500-chip sets, for example, can be purchased online for anywhere from $39 or so up to $300 (not including shipping), based on the quality, design, and weight of the chip. Each chip weighs anywhere from 11 to 14 grams.
If you are looking for the best poker chips and you want to top chip set for home games, pick one of these. You can't go wrong with any of them.
I've noticed that at the very bottom of that price range, the clay composite chips tend to be of unacceptably poor quality.
I once purchased a 1,000-chip set for $90 and paid $45 to ship them (they're heavy, and shipping is generally expensive). The chips arrived with 20 red chips equaling the height of only 19 white chips.
They had many other defects in them as well.
I had to send them back for a refund — and got stuck with one way of the shipping.
If you are ordering these metal-filled chips, then, I recommend you order no cheaper chip than the ones selling for about $150 for 1,000.
Customized Ceramic Poker Chips
The next step up are the Ceramic poker chips that sell for about $.40-$.75 or so each.
Nevada Jacks is the most popular brand of these chips. These also come in sets of 500 or 1,000.
A nice poker set of the best home poker chips in ceramic is known for their brilliant colors and sharp detail.
These are the best poker chips to buy. They are not metal filled, and they don't make the metal clanging sound when they bump together.
Players rave about them.
The most expensive, regularly produced variety of chips are the casino-quality clay chips made by the Paulson company, typified by the Top Hat and Cane design.
These chips cost roughly $1.25 a chip, or from $1,100 to $1,400 for a set of 1,000.
If you want your home poker chips to be just like those in a casino and you don't mind paying for them, these are the ones for you.
Home Poker Tourney Chip Calculator
The best ceramic poker chips for home games are:
- Brybelly 500 Count Nevada Jack Poker Set - 10 Gram Premium Casino Grade Ceramic Chips with Aluminum Case
There is another option to consider.
Some chip manufacturers will customize your chips with your own design.
These can come as a 'hot stamped' imprint, as a printed label that is permanently affixed to the chip, or in the case ceramic chips the design can be built into the chip itself.
Prices for this option vary widely, so shop around if this interests you.
Poker Chip Cases
Keep in mind that you'll almost certainly want a case in which to store and transport your poker chip ser. There are a few options in this department as well.
The most common are these thin aluminium or vinyl attaché cases.
These are most frequently made with room for 500 chips, and a few extra spaces for cards. There are also chip cases that accommodate 250, 350, 750, and 1,000 chips.
They sell for between $20-$50 and can vary some in quality, though it's usually next to impossible to tell from the pictures which ones are more sturdily made. Look for reinforcements in the corners.
Home Poker Chips Calculator Download
Also, the 1,000 capacity chip case, when filled with chips, will be too heavy for some to easily carry around.
You might be better off ordering two 500s instead. There is also, now, a 2,000-chip case that comes with wheels for easier transportation.
If you run tournaments or move your game from place to place, you might be tempted to get it, but I don't recommend it.
From everything I've read and heard, it is not built with sufficient sturdiness to survive much use. Tales of handles and wheels falling off upon first use are a legend.
There are a few other chip case options. One is a clear lucite chip case. It is built for 1,000 chips, stacked in chip racks of 100 each, and sells for about $50.
Home Poker Chips Calculator Game
This is very useful if you run tournaments and want to easily have your chips organized for simple distribution to a large group of people.
Home Poker Tourney Chip Calculator
It's also extremely sturdy, easy to stack, and doesn't dent, scratch, or otherwise deteriorate from regular use (unlike the aluminium and vinyl cases described above). It's what I use, and I recommend it highly.
Finally, for those who care about how your chip cases look, there are some very nice wooden storage boxes. They tend to be cube-shaped, come in a dark finish, and have shiny, small metal handles, one on each side of the box.
They aren't easy to carry, and so would be awkward and inappropriate if you transported your chips regularly.
But they do look nice sitting on a shelf. They sell for about $50 separately, but like all other chip cases, they are often included in the price of a chip set.
Other Recommendations
Home Poker Chips Calculator Free
I would immediately rule out the very cheap plastic poker chips and the very cheapest of the metal filled chips.
Beyond that, however, I don't think there is really much of a difference in how your poker-playing guests will react to the chips.
I've played in home games with the best ceramic poker chips and with Paulson's. They were beautiful to behold.
But I noticed no one really seemed to care.
I've found that poker players are typically so completely engaged in how much they were up or down that the look of their chips was the last thing they cared about.
That being said, you might care about that, and might take great pride in having a truly beautiful set or chips that remind you of what you play with at the nearest casino.
One last item to consider — there are very few brick-and-mortar stores that sell a wide variety of poker chips (The Gambler's General Store in Las Vegas is a great exception).
Amazon, Target, Walmart and a few other retail chains may have boxed sets for sale, but the chips themselves will still be hidden.
That means for the most part, you'll probably be looking online at an image of a chip — not the real thing — when you contemplate a purchase.
For that reason, I recommend that before you buy a complete set of chips, especially an expensive one, that you either purchase or ask the company to send you for free some sample chips.
Catalogs, computer screens, and the like don't really do a chip justice. For that you'll need to see, hold, and use the chip itself.
Sure, it may cost you $5 or $10 to get a small sample set of chips from the manufacturer. But that's a much less costly option than ordering chips you don't want and having to return them.
About the Author
Ashley Adams has been playing poker for 50 years and writing about it since 2000. He is the author of hundreds of articles as well as Winning 7-Card Stud (Kensington 2003). He is also the host of poker radio show House of Cards. See www.houseofcardsradio.com for broadcast times, stations, and podcasts.
This article was originally written by Ashley Adams in August 2016. Last update: December 2019.
Photos: 'Ready for poker,' Laura, CC BY 2.0; 'Poker Chips,' Indi Samarajiva, CC BY 2.0; 'Poker XII,' Bastian Greshake, CC BY-SA 2.0; 'New custom ceramic chip set,' BigMikeSndTch, CC BY 2.0; 'Poker anyone?' uzi978, CC BY-SA 2.0;.
Be sure to complete your PokerNews experience by checking out an overview of our mobile and tablet apps here. Stay on top of the poker world from your phone with our mobile iOS and Android app, or fire up our iPad app on your tablet. You can also update your own chip counts from poker tournaments around the world with MyStack on both Android and iOS.
Tags
home gamescash game strategytournament strategypoker tablesno-limit hold'emstud gameslive pokerpoker chips
