Oct 22, 2009 Contrary to the popular belief that the heaviest chips are the best quality, clay casino chips usually weigh between 8 and 9 grams. Color of the Poker Chips Try to maintain the industry standard when selecting the color of your chips. Among our quality collection of casino grade poker chips you’ll find a fine selection of chips that are categorized by material, weight, and denomination. From ceramic and clay, to chips with coin inlays, or blanks, this is this section for poker players with particular preferences.
Chips from the fictional 'Casino de Isthmus City'.
50,000 Malagasy franc gaming plaque from Grand Cercle casino, Antananarivo, Madagascar, circa 1995.
Casino tokens (also known as casino or gaming chips, checks, or cheques) are small discs used in lieu of currency in casinos. Colored metal, injection-molded plastic or compression molded clay tokens of various denominations are used primarily in table games, as opposed to metal token coins, used primarily in slot machines. Casino tokens are also widely used as play money in casual or tournament games.
Some casinos also use rectangular gaming plaques for high-stakes table games ($25,000 and above). Plaques differ from chips in that they are larger, usually rectangular in shape and contain serial numbers.
![]() Use[edit]
Money is exchanged for tokens in a casino at the casino cage, at the gaming tables, or at a cashier station. The tokens are interchangeable with money at the casino. Generally they have no value outside of the casino, but certain businesses (such as taxis or waiters—especially for tips) in gambling towns may honor them informally.
Tokens are employed for several reasons. Because of the uniform size, shape, and patterns of stacks of chips, they are easier to tally compared to currency. This attribute also enables the pit boss or security to quickly verify the amount being paid, reducing the chance that a dealer might incorrectly pay a customer. The uniform weight of the casino's official tokens allows them to weigh great stacks or heaps of chips rather than tally them (though aids such as chip trays are far more common.) Furthermore, it is observed that consumers gamble more freely with replacement currencies than with cash.[citation needed] A more pragmatic reason for casinos using chips in place of cash at table games is to discourage players from grabbing back their bet and attempting to flee should their bet not win, because chips, unlike cash, must be redeemed at the casino cashier and have no value outside the casino in question. Lastly, the chips are considered to be an integral part of the casino environment, and replacing them with some alternate currency would be unpopular[dubious].
Many casinos have eliminated the use of metal tokens (and coins) in their slot machines, in favor of paper receipts or pre-paid cards, which, while requiring heavy infrastructure costs to install, eliminate the coin handling expenses, jamming problems encountered in machines which took coins or tokens and can allow more game-specific technology in the space of a machine which would usually be dedicated to coin mechanisms. While some casinos (such as the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas) which installed the receipt system had kept the $1 tokens around for use as $1 chips, most other casinos using the receipts had simply scrapped the tokens entirely. Most casinos using receipts have automated machines at which customers may redeem receipts, eliminating the need for coin counting windows and decreasing labor costs.
Casino chip collecting is a part of numismatics, more specifically as specialized exonumia collecting. This hobby has become increasingly popular with the Casino Chips & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club formed in 1988. Some collectors may value certain casino tokens up to $100,000, which are typically traded on online auction websites like eBay. Several casinos sell custom-made sets of chips and one or two decks of cards stamped with the name of the casino on them. Each set is contained in a small briefcase or box.
History[edit]
The ancestors of the modern casino token were the counters used to keep score in the card games Ombre and Quadrille. In 1752, French Quadrille sets contained a number of different counters, known as jetons, fiches and mils. Unlike modern poker chips, they were colored differently only to determine player ownership for purposes of settling payments at the end of the game, with different denominations differentiated by different shapes that each counter type had.[1]
In the early history of Poker during the 19th century, players seemed to use any small valuable object imaginable. Early poker players sometimes used jagged gold pieces, gold nuggets, gold dust, or coins as well as 'chips' primarily made of ivory, bone, wood, paper, and a composition made from clay and shellac. Several companies between the 1880s and the late 1930s made clay composition poker chips. There were over 1000 designs from which to choose. Most chips were white, red, blue, and yellow, but they could be made in almost any color desired.
Construction[edit]
Authentic clay chip manufactured for home use.
Official Poker Chip Weight
$1 chip from Treasure Island, Las Vegas, NV.
The vast majority of authentic casino chips are 'clay' chips but can be more accurately described as compression molded chips. Contrary to popular belief, no gaming chip going as far back as the 1950s has been 100% clay. Modern clay chips are a composition of materials more durable than clay alone. At least some percentage of the chips is of an earthen material such as sand, chalk, and clay similar to that found in cat litter. The process used to make these chips is a trade secret, and varies slightly by manufacturer, most being relatively expensive and time-consuming per chip. The edge spots, or inserts, are not painted on; to achieve this effect, this area of the clay is removed and then replaced with clay of a different color; this can be done to each chip individually or a strip can be taken out of a cylindrical block of material and replaced with the alternate color before the block is cut into chips. Then each chip receives a mid-inlay if desired, and is placed in a special mold that heats and compresses the chip at approximately 10,000 psi (70 MPa) at 300 °F (150 °C), hence the term compression molded chips.
The printed graphics on clay chips is called an inlay. Inlays are typically made of paper and are then clad with a plastic film applied to the chip prior to the compression molding process. During the molding process the inlay becomes permanently fastened to the chip and can not be removed from the chip without destroying the inlay.
Ceramic chips were introduced in the mid 1980s as alternative to clay chips, and are also used in casinos, as well as being readily available to the home market. The ability to print lettering and graphics on the entire surface of the chip, instead of just the inlay, made them popular. Ceramic chips are sometimes also referred to as clay or clay composite, but they are in fact an injection-molded chip made with a special plastic or resin formula that approximates the feel and sound of ceramic or porcelain. There are less expensive chips for the home market, made from various forms of plastic and plastic covered metal slugs as well.
The chips used in North American casinos typically weigh about 10 grams, but are usually between 8 and 10.5 g. Companies that manufacture chips for actual casinos include Gaming Partners International (whose subdivisions include Paulson, Bud Jones, and B&G), Classic Poker Chips, Palm Gaming International, Game On Chip Company and GTI Gaming.
Colors[edit]
There is no universally standardized color scheme for poker chip values, and schemes not only vary nationally and regionally, but even from venue to venue, or by event type within a single venue.
A standard 300 piece set of Plastic Injection chips often sold as 'clay composite' chips.
A set of injection molded ABS poker chips 'hot-stamped' with denominations 100, 50, 25, & 10.
Chip colors found in home sets typically include red, white, blue, and sometimes green and black; however, more recently a wide assortment of colors have become readily available, particularly in lower-cost ABS plastic chips. Common additional colors are pink, purple, yellow, orange, and grey. Newer designs in home chips include three-color designs where a three-step molding process creates a chip with unique base, secondary, and detail colors. As chip sets are tailored to the buyer, the values of various colors vary widely, with less traditional colors either used as very high values such as $500, $1,000, $5,000, and so forth, common in tournaments, or as special 'fractional' values such as $2 or $0.50, common in low-limit games.
In casinos, uniform chip colors and sizes are sometimes specified by the local gaming control board for consistency. For example, regulations in New Jersey[2] and Illinois[3] specify similar uniform colors. Notably, Nevada has no regulations regarding color, which is why Nevada casinos may use white, blue, or gray as $1, though $5 and greater are almost always consistently colored. All US states where gambling is legal require that casino chips have a unique combination of edge spots for identification, the name and location of the casino and the chip's value, if any, impressed, printed, or molded onto the obverse and reverse of the token.
In 19th-century America, there was enough of a tradition of using blue chips for higher values that 'blue chip' in noun and adjective senses signaling high-value chips and high-value property are attested since 1873 and 1894, respectively.[4] This established connotation was first extended to the sense of a blue-chip stock in the 1920s.[5]
$2.50 chips (colloquially referred to as 'snappers' by chip collectors) are mostly used for blackjack tables, since a 'natural' (a 21 on the first two cards dealt to a player) typically pays 3:2 and most wagers are in increments of $5. However, the Tropicana Casino and Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and others, have used $2.50 (pink) chips in $7.50 to $15 and $10 to $20 poker games.
$20 chips are used mostly at baccarat and pai gow poker because a 5% commission charged for all winning banker wagers at baccarat and winning wagers at pai gow converts evenly. Bets of $20 are not uncommon in traditional table games such as craps and roulette; a $20 chip, for example, places a $5 bet on each of the 'hard ways' in craps and is preferable to passing a stack of chips or making change.
Because eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, chips denominated 8, 88, and 888 (e.g., $8 in the US) are common in casinos catering to a Chinese clientele, often as a promotion for the Chinese Lunar New Year. They will sometimes contain an image of the animal associated with the year and are issued in a variety of colors.
Low-denomination yellow chips vary in value: $20 in Atlantic City and Illinois (which also uses 'mustard yellow' $0.50 chips); $5 at most Southern California poker rooms; $2 at Foxwoods' poker room in Ledyard, Connecticut; Running Aces Harness Park and Canterbury Park, both in Minnesota; and at Casino del Sol in Tucson, Arizona; and $0.50 at Potawatomi Casino in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Blue chips are occasionally used for $10, most notably in Atlantic City. In Las Vegas and California, most casinos use blue or white for $1 chips, though many Las Vegas casinos now use $1 metal tokens in lieu of chips.
Chips are also available in denominations of $1000 or more, depending on the wagering limits of the casino. Such chips are often yellow or orange.[clarification needed]. Casinos in Nevada, Atlantic City, and other areas that permit high wagers typically have chips available in $5000, $10,000, $25,000, and more; the colors for these vary widely.
Denominations above $5000 are almost never encountered by the general public; their use is usually limited to 'high limit rooms' where bet sizes are much greater than on the main floor. Casinos often use gaming plaques for these denominations: These plaques are about the size of a playing card, and must be marked with serial numbers. The greatest value placed on a plaque to date is $10 million, used at the London Club in Las Vegas.[6]
Televised poker tournaments and cash games sometimes use bundled paper bills for high denominations, though the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour use round chips exclusively with denominations up to $250,000; tournament chips, however, are not redeemable for cash.
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European casinos use a similar scheme, though certain venues, such as the Aviation Club de France, use pink for €2 and blue for €10. European casinos also use plaques rather than chips for high denominations, usually in the €1000 and higher range.
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Security[edit]
Each casino has a unique set of chips, even if the casino is part of a greater company. This distinguishes a casino's chips from others, since each chip and token on the gaming floor has to be backed up with the appropriate amount of cash. In addition, with the exception of Nevada, casinos are not permitted to honor another casino's chips.
The security features of casino chips are numerous. Artwork is of a very high resolution or of photographic quality. Custom color combinations on the chip edge (edge spots) are usually distinctive to a particular casino. UV markings can be made on the inlay. Certain chips incorporate RFID technology, such as those at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas. Also, makers' marks are difficult to reproduce. Also being used by one manufacturer, Palm Gaming, is an audible taggant incorporated into the ceramic chip blank. A simple handheld reader will beep if the gaming chip is authentic. Palm Gaming is even manufacturing custom made molds for their ceramic gaming chips- adding yet another high level of security to its gaming chip.
Counterfeit chips are rare. High levels of surveillance, along with staff familiarity with chip design and coloring, make passing fake chips difficult. Casinos, though, are prepared for this situation. All states require that casinos have a set of chips in reserve with alternate markings,[citation needed] though they may not be required to have exactly the same number of reserve chips as they do on the floor. The most notable instance of counterfeiting chips was broken up in 2005, when two men were caught falsely converting $1 chips into higher denominations.[7]
Casino chips used in tournaments are usually much cheaper and of much simpler design. Because the chips have no cash value, usually chips are designed with a single color (usually differing in shade or tone from the version on the casino floor), a smaller breadth, and a basic mark on the interior to distinguish denominations; however, at certain events (such as the World Series of Poker or other televised poker), chips approach quality levels of chips on the floor.
Variations[edit]
Several casinos, such as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, issue 'limited edition' varied-designed chips, commemorating various events, though retaining a common color scheme. This encourages customers to keep them for souvenirs, at a profit to the casino.
High 5 casino free 10. In certain casinos, such as the Wynn and Encore Casinos in Las Vegas, chips are embedded with RFID tags to help casinos keep better track of them, determine gamblers' average bet sizes, and to make them harder for counterfeiters to reproduce. However, this technique is costly and considered by many to be unnecessary to profit. Also, this technology provides minimal benefits in games with layouts that do not provide gamblers with their own designated betting areas, such as craps.
In television[edit]
The first game show to use them, Duel, had a variation in which the contestants answer questions using oversized casino tokens. The World Series of Poker at one time actually used its casino tokens for the poker tournaments, but in more recent years has had special Paulson WSOP clay sets made for the tournaments.
See also[edit]References[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Casino_token&oldid=931710983'
Official Casino Poker Chip Weights
11.5 grams IS NOT the standard weight of casino chips.
Let me repeat that. 11.5 grams IS NOT the standard weight of casino chips. Neither is 13 grams.
This is the single biggest misconception poker chip buyers have, and it’s hard to blame them with all the confusing information out there. In fact, many poker chip retailers are even confused about this. The reality is that every chip in a Las Vegas casino today is between 8.5 and 10 grams. Authentic clay casino chips are between 9 and 10 grams, with slight variations from color to color due to the different color densities. Authentic ceramic casino chips are pretty much right on 10 grams.
The interesting thing is that weight is only one of numerous factors that consumers need to consider when buying chips, and probably not even the most important. Feel to the touch, natural sound when riffling thru chips or splashing the pot, and the slipperiness of the chips are all important factors to consider. Even if your budget dictates that you can’t entertain the idea of getting authentic casino chips from the same manufacturers that make chips for casinos, you can still strive to get chips that approximate actual casino chips in terms of sound, feel, texture, and weight. If you’re on a budget, consider our Venerati chips. If you want actual casino chips, try our Protege Clay line, or our Archetype line.
Why all the confusion about 11.5 grams?
To the best we can tell, the confusion over chip weights stems from the widely available plastic interlocking Bicycle poker chips that dominated the consumer poker chip market up until about the turn of the century. These red, white, and blue chips were very inexpensive and also very light, like only a few grams a piece.
While there are numerous and substantial differences between Bicycle chips and real casino chips, the most easily described difference is the weight difference. So when the low-cost Chinese manufactures entered the poker chip market, they rightly identified the markets desire for heavy chips “just like the casinos use”. But they were targeting a much different quality market than actual casino chips as they were competing solely in the consumer market with Bicycle chips which sell for $5 per 100 chips or so. To produce them inexpensively while still heavy, they made them out of plastic with metal slugs, and ended up with a chip that was 11.5 grams. The 11.5 gram number became the stamp of authenticity, verifying that these weren’t the lightweight plastic interlocking Bicycle chips. So to the market, 11.5 grams just came to mean “not the cheap-feeling lightweight chips”.
When the poker boom began in 2003, the market was inundated with these 11.5 gram chips. They were everywhere. More importantly, actual casino chips available to the public (chips made by the same manufacturers that make chips for the casinos) were, and still are today, only available at a handful of places in the entire world. They were very expensive and target just a very small segment of a much larger consumer poker chip market. The casual buyer wouldn’t even know they were available. Still, consumers wanted chips “just like in the casinos”, so that’s what many shady retailers started pitching the low-end chips to be. The pitch became, “11.5 gram poker chips, just like the casinos.” Pretty soon almost every retailer out there who carries poker chips is pitching the same lie. And thus it became a widely accepted norm. Even today, most poker players will steadfastly swear that real casino chips are 11.5 grams.
The ironic thing is that it’s very easy to prove exactly how heavy casino chips are. Just carry one out of a casino and weigh one. Of course, aside from a few poker chip collectors and aficionados, it doesn’t make much sense for someone buying a $100 set of poker chips to take the time and effort to weigh a actual poker chips, especially when you’re weighing grams which requires a hard to find specialty cooking scale that may cost $40 itself. For every one person that does weigh real casino chips, there are a thousand people that read that real casino chips weigh 11.5 grams. Add to that the fact that consumers really want to believe that they bought a set of chips “just like the casinos,” and it only cost them $100. It’s a lie they want to believe. So the myth perpetuates.
The great lengths some companies will go to dupe the public
To further add to the confusion, it’s possible to make an 11.5 gram poker chip out of many different types of plastics and/or composite materials. Some materials are fifty times as expensive as others. Never mind that 11.5 grams isn’t even the real casino standard. Nonetheless, all the consumer wants to hear is that the chips are 11.5 grams and they’ll buy. Pretty soon, hundreds of millions of 11.5 gram chips made out of the cheapest materials available are being sold in stores around the world.
As the saying goes, you can fool some people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. When people start realizing that they’ve been duped and their chips are nothing like real casino chips (which is very easy to prove by just carrying a casino chip home and comparing it), they get a little pissed off and vent. This venting naturally gets published all over the web. Suddenly, poker chip retailers have to spin a new tale or face the wrath of consumers. The easy scapegoat becomes metal inserts and “clay composite” materials. As the widely held perception is that all casino chips are clay and they don’t have metal inserts, suddenly the logic becomes that real chips are anything that’s heavy, made out of some kind of clay, and doesn’t have a metal insert. As flawed as that logic is, it again is another lie that consumers want to believe. Having already wasted $100 or so, they desperately want to believe that they can still get a set of actual casino chips for just another $100. They’ve just got to weed thru all that 11.5 gram propaganda.
Two new layers of propaganda get added to the mix.
First, as consumers are starting to educate themselves a bit about real casino chips, they start asking retailers for “clay chips”. Since 99.9% of retailers don’t have clay chips, and can’t figure out how to source them (because there are only a few somewhat closely guarded manufacturers in the world), they figure a good solution is to just start calling their chips “clay composite”. It’s the same chips they sold before, just with a different marketing slogan, plus it’s a vague enough term that it could mean almost anything, so they go with it. Some of them even go with heavier chips like 13, 14, or 15 gram chips to differentiate their chips from the 11.5 gram debacle.
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A second group of the market takes on the metal slug issue and comes out with a chip that doesn’t have a metal slug in it. Never mind that it’s just a different type of plastic and nothing like an actual casino chip, as long as it doesn’t have the metal slug its provides a nice tale to spin. The audacity of some of these companies is remarkable. I’ve heard they actually aired TV ads purporting how their chips are the “Real deal” and go onto explain how to spot a fake by the metal insert. It’s truly unbelievable.
So how do you tell?
With all the confusing and conflicting information out there, it’s challenging. First off, if they say something like 11.5 grams, just run. That’s a telltale sign, and an obvious one. All chips in casinos today are somewhere between 8.5 grams and 10 grams. If it’s not in that range, it’s not from a real chip manufacturer. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that it is a real casino chip if it is in that range. It’s only one of many factors.
Unless you know chips pretty well, it’s difficult to delineate all of the other factors of authenticity, which include factors such as feel, sound, material construction, molds/engravings, graphic detail, and more. The best method is to directly ask the vendor which casinos in Las Vegas these chips are used in. Unfortunately, they can lie I suppose, but you can usually find a chip from that casino on the web and compare the images at least. Our Las Vegas Chip Image index may help.
Probably the most telling sign is the price of the chip. If they are not in the range of $1 to $1.50 per chip, they’re probably not authentic casino chips (from the same manufacturers that make chips for Las Vegas casinos). There is no way around it. As much as you might like to, you are just not going to find an authentic casino chip set of 500 chips for $100, just like you’re not going to find a new luxury car for $5000.
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Identifying an authentic casino chip:
Select your favorite authentic casino chip from among our high-end lines including the Protege Clay line and the Archetype line.
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