Have you yet calculated/polled the probability of $1-off events? This may give you the answer you need about whether to ditch 2′s and 3′s or not.

I’m most-likely in the camp that would like to see the increments standardized at the minimum possible value, but if you were to do this as part of the development of the game, I don’t think you should turn 5′s into 2′s…I think you should turn 5′s into 20′s, and don’t use singles.

20-10, 40-15, 60-20, 80-25, 100-30, 120-35, 140-40, and 160-50. Revenue is 1/4 the cost, plus $5. Major changes include the new valuation of the high-end cards, as well as increased revenue throughout (by 25%). A benefit would be in endgame tabulation – the highest combination values would all be factors of 50.

Such a minor change would undoubtedly force you to recalculate things, so maybe the easiest fix would be just to use a $2 chip.

In other words, I can see how with $1 increments, it would hit a multiple at 35, 40, 45, etc, whereas with 2 it would only hit half as often, at 40, 50, etc., but all that presumes you’re only bidding on one card at a time, which most of the time you aren’t.

I suspect that due to bidding on multiple cards at a time — possibly even multiple times in the same round, that it really doesn’t make as big a difference in the number of $1-offs as you might think… certainly, imho, not enough to offset the “additional rules complexity.”

In my opinion, the more important question might be to ask whether the finer granularity of $1 raises would be good or not.