Many live poker rooms use a similar system of assigning colors to chip value, especially in cash games. Red chips, for example, are worth $5 in most live poker rooms and casinos.
Tournament chip sets tend to vary colors more than cash games, but some common themes can still be found across many poker rooms.
In this article, we’ll cover:
Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most commonly used colors and their respective poker chip values.
(Note: If you want advice for distributing chips in your home game, read How to Distribute Chips in a Poker Home Game.)
The four most common chip colors and their values are:
White or Blue: $1
Red: $5 (some casinos use yellow instead)
Green: $25
Black: $100
You will find that these four values are by far the most used by casinos.
Note: Want 10 quick tips that will help you win at poker? Get this free guide if you want to come out on top.
Less common chip colors and their values:
Pink: $2.50 (very rare, usually just used in blackjack)
Brown: $10 (some casinos use blue instead)
Purple: $500
Yellow: $1,000 (some casinos use grey or burgundy instead)
Dark Brown: $5,000 (some casinos use red-white-and-blue instead, which are known as “flags”)
Low-stakes limit hold’em cash games are often identifiable by the endless piles of blue or white chips at the table. These are the colors most commonly applied to $1 chips in live poker rooms.
Cash game players should often have at least a few of these at their disposal. Posting blinds in low stakes games, as well as tipping, requires the $1 chip.
Blue and white are often used for $1 poker chips.
As cash game veterans know, $5 chips are almost universally red. Live poker rooms will deviate from standard colors for other chip values, but red $5 poker chips are a staple in almost all casinos.
These red chips are at the heart of No-Limit Hold’em games from $1/$2 up to $5/$10.
Note that some casinos, specifically in California, use yellow chips as $5s.
The $25 green chips usually start appearing in $2/$5 cash games and higher. Much like the red $5 chips, green $25 chips are used at many casinos.
Las Vegas poker rooms like Bellagio, Aria, and many others use green to signify a $25 poker chip value.
Aria uses a standard color code for cash game poker chip values.
Note that some casinos, specifically in California, use purple chips as $25s.
Black chips at a poker cash game table are usually an indication that the stakes, or at least the maximum buy-in, are getting higher.
Live poker rooms often use black for $100 chips. These chips can sometimes be solid black, but are often striped with other colors. Other poker rooms use large white chips as $100s.
Black $100 chips seen in play at Bellagio in Las Vegas.
You’re starting to sit in on some high-stakes cash games when stacks of the purple chips are at the table. Purple is often an indicator of $500 chips, and a standard 20-chip column of these is a $10,000 stack.
The next level up from the purples, the $1,000 cash games chips are often yellow across poker rooms that spread high-stakes games.
Assorted cash game chips from the Wynn Las Vegas poker room (image courtesy Jeff Greens).
The poker chip values and colors assigned to tournament chips ets vary much more from casino to casino.
Let’s take a look at some of the commonly-used colors for poker tournament chip sets. Note that these are the same values used by the World Series of Poker during their Main Event:
Green: 25 chips
Black: 100 chips
Purple: 500 chips (some casinos use pink or blue instead)
Yellow: 1,000 chips (some casinos use chips that are more like gold than yellow)
Orange: 5,000 chips (some casinos use grey or a different color)
Dark Green: 25,000 (this chip color varies from casino to casino)
Like cash games, tournaments often featured green chips that are worth 25. Don’t get too attached, though, these chips are usually removed from the table during a “color-up” after a few levels of play.
Much like the $100 cash game counterpart, black is often used for 100 value chips. These chips are generally seen in the early stages of a tournament and are the first to be taken out of play as the blinds increase.
Again often matching its $500 cash game equivalent, 500 chips commonly display pink, purple or blue in their color schemes.
The World Series of Poker uses several different chipsets across multiple tournaments each year. In many of those sets, the 500 chips have the signature pink, purple or blue colors.
Poker rooms widely use yellow or gold as the color for 1,000 chips. This color is used for 1,000 chips in several of the WSOP chip sets, and is also commonly seen in live poker rooms around the globe.
Tournament poker chips from Wynn Las Vegas.
Colors used for 5,000 tournament chips and higher start to vary much more from different poker rooms. Orange is used often for 5,000, including multiple WSOP chipsets.
Tournament poker chips at 25,000 and higher vary widely from casino to casino. Even the WSOP uses vastly different colors for high-denomination tournament chips across its multiple chipsets.
The WSOP Main Event chipset uses forest green for 25,000 chips, and lavender for 100,000 chips. For 500,000 and above, bigger chips are used. These chips are often referred to as “mini-frisbees” by WSOP announcer Lon McEachern due to their larger physical size.
Chips from the World Series of Poker Main Event set.
It’s critically important to know what color is assigned to each poker chip value. This can get tricky when playing tournaments in particular, as so many different colors are used, and the denominations go much bigger than in a cash game.
Note: The following section discusses some of the most common chip colors you’ll see for various denominations in poker cash games. Keep in mind that poker tournaments use a wide variety of colors for all of the different tournament chip amounts, without much uniformity among different poker rooms.
Blue chips are usually worth $1 in most poker cash games, but you’ll also occasionally see blue used for $10 denomination chips.
Many poker rooms in Las Vegas (Bellagio, Aria, Wynn, and several others) use blue for $1 chips. Be sure you know how much the blue chips (and all of the other colors on this list) are worth at the specific poker room you’re playing at.
Red poker chips are generally worth $5 in poker cash games across the country. There are some exceptions, but red $5 chips are pretty standard at many poker rooms.
Green poker chips are usually worth $25 in poker cash games. Green $25 chips are standard at Las Vegas poker rooms, as well as many other poker venues in the U.S.
Black chips are worth $100 at many U.S. poker rooms. You’ll sometimes see other colors used for $100 chips, but black is very common for this denomination.
White poker chips are usually worth $1 in most cash games. You’ll also see blue used for $1 chips quite often (especially in Las Vegas).
Some poker rooms in California use white for $100 chips.
Purple poker cash game chips are often worth $500, especially at Las Vegas poker rooms. You’ll see other colors for $500 chips as well, but purple is pretty common for the $500 denomination.
Yellow poker chips can represent several different denominations depending on where you’re playing. In Las Vegas, yellow is often used for $1,000 denomination chips.
Red, white, and blue poker chips (sometimes referred to as flags) are usually worth $5,000. You’ll see the flags on the table in the highest stakes games at Bellagio and Aria in Las Vegas.
Orange can represent many different money denominations at poker rooms around the world. Be sure you know the value of your orange chips if you have them in front of you in a poker cash game.
For more on how to distribute chips in your own home poker game, check out the article below:
Note: Want 10 quick tips that will help you win at poker? Get this free guide if you want to come out on top.
Leave a Comment