High stakes poker

Poker Chips: Casino Security in the Stacks

Poker chips have long replaced paper cash in function as every poker game's currency. Generally, when you pay the buy-in to a tourney seat, you are given, in exchange, stacks of starting chips with a defined play-value. In poker tournaments, poker chips have no actual or real value. In ring games, however, they have equivalent real cash value. Outside of poker rooms, however, they have no real fiscal use.

Poker chips are easier to pile atop each other, and much easier to count than paper cash. Poker chips also render forgery or counterfeiting quite improbable. Because of their distinctive artwork, color, and edge spots, poker chips make it easier for casino personnel to spot the not.

Other security features of poker chips include the creator's or marker's markings, mold design, and UV markings. Some casinos also replace their chips with new ones.

There are several types of poker chips based on mold material used. Generally, casinos use clay chips, which are custom made.

Clay chips are not made of pure clay, but of a composition of several materials which make the chips last longer. Because clay chips are custom-made, they need to be ordered in sets. The number of pieces you can order depends on the item type you are ordering and on the manufacturer you are placing your order for.

Ceramic chips are also called clay composite. Ceramic chips are, in reality, only imprinted ceramic disks.

Plastic chips, on the other hand, are made of ABS plastic, and are generally cheaper than most type of chips.

Poker chips vary in weight. Most chips found in casinos have weight range of 8.5 to 10 grams. Some weigh more, especially home poker chips. Some reaches 13.5 grams. By logic, it is their weight that renders chips easy to pile.

Color is used to denote denomination. Available colors for home poker chips, especially plastic chips, are white, blue, and red.

Casino chips have wider assortment of colors. Casinos generally assign their own value for chips. Thus, the $5 yellow chips used in several southern California cardrooms have $2 values in Foxwoods and in Casino del Sol.

Some casinos also follow decrees on assigning of amount value for chips. In many Atlantic City cardrooms, for instance, blue chips are worth $10.

Whatever their color or design or material composition, poker chips serve the same integral function. Whether they have play-values, as in tournaments, or actual cash values, as in ring games, poker chips are the currency of poker games.