How do you keep track of your chips?

[dork]

Heavy, would you please move this to "So Craps is New and you don't have a clue" because I don't have a clue... Thanks!

Every once in a while I'll see someone who's stacked their chips in "hundreds" (every 4 greens turned 90* to each other [for instance]), but most players just have them all aligned together in their rack. Most have them arranged by color, some don't even care and seem to just rack winnings as they're paid.

I didn't used to care; I'd sort my rack after every hand--by color and counting up periodically. Now, playing and betting with more, I think it's important for me to find a way to rack them so's I can see where I stand at a glance. Sooo... now, I'll have my white chips on the far left (handy for "50 for 1's", etc); next to the whites I"ll separate $500 of greens with single white chips; any odd extra green is turned 4x at 90* (in hundreds) on the $500(s) right, and the red chips are to the farthest right side.

Unfortunately, I haven't needed a second row to tally my money so I use the second row to rack each incidental payoff as it occurs. But the dice move FAST at Hard Rock, and I can't hardly keep up with organizing my 4x 90* greens, or sorting reds from whites AND make my bets.

Yet, it's important to me to know where I am in the middle of a hand (lots of times); I'd like to know when my Place bets are paid for themselves, (so's to know if I wanna parlay, etc). Once I blew it because I didn't realize I had >$600 on the table and another 8 in that hands' winnings--I would have regressed to minimums (except for a Signature Number) if I'd known I was holding 800 in the second rack but I was a real neophyte and didn't even have the green separated--and of course, I 7'd with almost as much on the table as I'd won.

Nowadays, I (try to) play with very few others and the HR dealers know me so they slow down enough (especially when I'm the shooter and obviously counting chips) to let me "take inventory" but when I'm not the shooter, the dice move really fast and I can't keep up.

How do ya'll "keep inventory" (and do you do it during a hand, too, or only after each hand sevens out)?

Thanks!

[220Inside]

I do two things.

When buying in i first organize my chips with the lower denomination chips (whites) on the outside of either side of my rack, followed by the reds, then greens, with the blacks on the middle. This is to protect my high vale chips from rail birds looking to snag some out of your rack when you're not looking.

In practice, this means I take my normal $1020 buy in, which consists of 1 full stack of green, red and white chips along with 4 blacks and break it down some that the blacks are in the middle, with 1/2 stack if greens to either side, then 1/2 stack of reds and finally 1/2 stack of whites on the outsides.

When betting i always pull chips from the left side of my rack, the one towards the stick if I'm at SR and leave the right side untouched. I do this for a couple of reasons. First is that I'm generally facing towards the stick so I'm naturally more protected from those rail birds on that end of my rack. The other is that I now only have to do quick tallies of only 1/2 of my rack to get a general idea of where I am for the session.

The last thing I do is to use the back end of my rack to put collected chips while I'm shooting so that I can have a quick glance of where I stand profit wise for that hand. I'll organize the chips a little in the back of the rack in between shots if it gets a little messy and harder to tally but once the dice are pushed out to me, I'll stop what I'm doing and refocus on my next shot.

If I get into a good profit position in a hand and the back of the rack starts to get long, sometimes I'll move the initial outlay portion back into my main rack and only leave the profits in back.

[heavy]

Like 220 inside, I organize my chips with low denomination chips on the outside, protecting my higher denomination chips from rail birds trying to steal a chip from my rack while I'm distracted tossing the dice. So white chips on the outside, red chips next to them, green chips next to them, and black chips in the center (if not in my pocket).

I'm fairly good at estimating the value of my chips just by looking at them, but I picked up on an idea simply from my practice sessions and sizing chips when restacking them in the rack on my table after practice. The length of the space from the web between my thumb and forefinger and the deck of the table is basically 20 chips. You see the dealers doing this all the time when they size chips to stack them in their rack. So I just lay my thumb in front of my chip rail and gauge from that, measured roughly from the joint in my thumb to the tip of it. On thumb length is roughly $100 in red chips, $500 in green chips, $2000 in black chips. It's a rough estimate but typically I'm within $40 - $50 of being correct and that's good enough for me.