how mach chips are you given at the biginning of a hold-em game?

Answer 1

This depends on the tournament table that you are joining.
It could be 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 5000, 100000000.

The owner of the poker website will set that amount and it is usually in the description of the table before you join.

Regardless of what the amount of the table is, it has to do with increasing the bet automatically, say every 5 minutes.

For instance, at worldpokersite.com, I create a tournament table where the starting chip amount is 1500. The small blinds is 15 and big blind is 30. After 5 minutes, the small blinds and big blinds increased to small blinds 30, big blinds 60. and so on.
In addition to 5 minutes, you can also have X hands per Y levels.
5 hands mean the dealer passes out 5 new games, Y level is the # of time the small/big blinds increases. Levels only increases after 5 hands for example.

The auto increase of the blinds makes the table go faster, makes the player with small amount of chips to lose quicker. It also ensures that the game is more interesting.

So regardless of how much the table chips amount are at the beginning of a tournament, the small blinds/big blinds increase accordingly.

Good luck!
Jack
www.worldpokersite.com

Answer 2

I am going to assume that you refer to tournament games as in cash-game it has to represent the value of the money you pay for each chip.

You can play tournament poker with anywhere from 1-Unlimited chips. Though the extremes are not going to be much fun.

Typical for a casula homegame is around 1000-1500 chips.

Generally the more chips you add and the longer each blind level is, the more the game will favor skill.

In the World Series of Poker and most World Poker Tour events you will usually start with $10,000 in chips, with the buy-ins being the same.

You can however for a home-game decide to charge $20 for 1000-1500 chips - that's entirely up to you and your friends.

Remember that these two examples are in effect the same, but may feel different:

Starting chips: 1000
Starting blinds: 25/50

Starting chips: 2000
Starting blinds: 50/100