Poker chips, also known as tokens or checks, are commonly used in lieu of cash in even the lowest stakes home games. These small, easy-to-handle discs make the game flow at a faster rate. Most cardrooms no longer allow cash on the table except in higher stakes games where players are permitted to keep $100 bills alongside their chips.
Custom chips are a worthy expense that will not only reduce the liability of someone counterfeiting, or ‘running chips into the game,’ but will also improve the overall quality of any homegame. There are several factors to consider when purchasing a set of poker chips.
Quantity of Poker Chips
Playing cards come in two sizes - poker size and bridge size. Poker size is 63.5mm X 88.9mm. Bridge size is narrower at 56mm x 88.9mm. This makes more sense in old fashioned imperial measurements - both are 3.5 inches high, but poker cards are 2.5 inches wide while bridge cards are 2.25 inches wide.
Poker chips can be purchased in sets (100 up to 1000 are common) or per chip. Regardless of whether you buy a set or individual chips, you will need a general idea of how many chips to order. You want enough chips to cover the number of players. If you are running tournaments, you will want to order what is equivalent to one chip stack per player up to the maximum players permitted, plus a few extra replacement stacks.
Here is a sample calculation:
Maximum 30 player tournament order at least 33 stacks of chips. If that equates to 20 chips in various denominations per player, then 33 x 20 = 660 chips, so you know you want to go with no less than a 700 chip set. Keep in mind, rebuy/add-on tournaments will require additional stacks or some higher denomination chips that can be “colored up”.
When calculating how many chips to buy for a live action poker game, you will need to overestimate a bit. You never know if your game will suddenly escalate to higher stakes one night. You do not want to run the risk of running out of chips, so it is better to overestimate the number of chips you will need for your poker game. Ordering will be based on the stakes of the game and the number of poker players expected. On average you should have at least 100 chips per player, with the majority of your poker chips comprised of the two lowest denominations. I recommend purchasing at least 20 high denomination chips to ensure you do not run out during a heated poker game.
Type of Poker Chips
There are four common types of chips: plastic, composite, ceramic, and clay chips.
Plastic Poker Chips
There are really two types of common plastic poker chips available. The cheapest is the set commonly found in a round carrier. If you are playing friendly ‘kitchen table’ poker, these plastic chips, which can be purchased in any major chainstore will suffice. The second is Diamond chips that are made of plastic, but standard casino size and are a bit heavier than the cheaper plastic chips. These chips are solid in color and perfect for friendly poker games.
Composite Poker Chips
This is the most common poker chip purchased and used in regular homegames. They can also be found in chain stores and often come with a dealer button, deck of cards and a cut card. These chips are often adorned with dice, diamonds, or card suits on the edges of the chips. They are colored to match industry standards. They typically weigh 11.5 grams due to a metal insert. These chips work fine for a small stakes poker game or tournament where the risk of someone ‘running in chips’ is minimal. The most common complaint about these chips is they are slippery.
Customized composite chips with the metal insert are a common option for serious homegames. These are by far the most popular chips ordered on the internet. There are thousands of design options available for these chips. The designs can be put on label stickers, hot stamped, or engraved into the chip. The most popular weight is 11.5 grams. There is also a softer variation of this chip that does not have a metal insert for those players who do not like the ring of a metal inserted chip.
Ceramic Poker Chips
These chips have a smooth porcelain feel to them and are used in many casinos. The biggest benefit to these chips is they can be graphically designed with detail you cannot reproduce on other types of chips. They are also highly durable and will stand the test of time. There is a higher cost for these beautifully decorated poker chips, but they’ll look great in any serious home game – so if you can afford them then it’s probably worth the extra cost.
Clay Poker Chips
Clay chips, used mostly in casinos, are the most expensive type of chips available and generally are regarded as the best quality chips. These chips are made using a compression molding process where unique designs can be molded right into the chip. Clay chips are easiest to handle, stack, and do chip tricks with, making the $1+ per chip price tag seem worthy. 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. This helps reduce confusion among players who are used to betting five dollars when they toss a red chip into the pot and one hundred dollars when they bet a black chip. You will need about four different colored chips to play in a standard poker game and the two lowest valued chips will compromise the largest percentage of your set.
- $1 White Chip
- $5 Red Chip
- $10 Blue Chip
- $25 Green Chip
- $100 Black Chip
- $500 Purple Chip
- $1000 Orange Chip
After selecting the dominant color of each chip, you will also have the option of selecting a secondary or tertiary accent color, which is usually around the edge of the chip. Each additional color adds to the price of the chip. Be sure to select accent colors that completely differ from the accent colors on the other chip denominations. Chip denominations can get easily mixed when stacking them if the accent colors are too similar.
Weight of the Poker Chips
If you decide against expensive clay chips, the weight of all other poker chips is one of the most important factors to consider. Lightweight chips are typically cheaper, but heavier chips are more durable. If you plan on hosting frequent poker games, you will be better off in the long run investing money in chips that will not need to be constantly replaced. In addition, players prefer to play with heavier chips which are easier to maneuver and riffle.
Common Poker Chip Weights:
- 7.5 grams
- 8.5 grams
- 9.0 grams
- 11.5 grams
- 13.0 grams
- 13.5 grams
- 14 grams
Poker Chip Design
There are various different chip designs. Let’s examine your options.
Standard Designs
Chip manufacturers offer numerous designs that can be printed on the face of any poker chip. You can buy them pre-designed or for a higher price you can provide a picture or graphic artwork for customization.
Stickers
You can purchase round stickers in almost any design to place on the poker chips you choose. You can even buy blank chip stickers and customize them yourself on your own computer. If you go this route, consider buying chips with a recessed center so the stickers are easier to place and harder for players to damage.
Chip stickers make it easy to replace a chip that has been battered on the face, but keep in mind they are just stickers, so they will be easier to batter in the first place. If you decide on using stickers to mark your chips, be sure to stick to the common color denominations rather than one chip color with different labels. Otherwise, someone could sneak chips out and replace the stickers with higher denominations and sneak them back later and scam you out of money.
Gold or Silver Foil Stamping
Chips can be hot stamped with gold or silver lettering, usually only on chips with a solid colored center. It is common to use initials or dollar denominations. Keep in mind if you choose to have the dollar value stamped on the face, you lose the flexibility to change the value of the chips. Also, be aware that the gold & silver sometimes flakes off the chip with wear, especially with low quality manufacturing.
Engraved Poker Chips
Engraving your chips will make it less likely for someone to sneak chips into your game or counterfeit your chips. Manufacturers will allow you to engrave anything you want on the chips for a set price per chip. It is common to have your name, initials or place of business engraved on the face of the chip. You have to pay double if you want both sides engraved. If you really want a customized chip that will make counterfeiting difficult, scan your signature and have it engraved on the chips.
There are a lot of factors to consider when ordering a poker chip set. If after reviewing the above information you still cannot decide on what fits your needs, order a sample set. Most reputable chip suppliers now offer a sample of one of each type of chip they offer for a price of less than $10.00. Clay chip samples run closer to $20 per sample set. This will give you a chance to feel each chip and closely inspect the design work on each style so that you will find the perfect set for your game.
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By Kelli Mix
Kelli is the author of the 'Game Day Poker Almanac - Official Rules of Poker'. She lives in Carrollton, Georgia, where she is the state director for the Poker Players Alliance.
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Poker is a family of card games that combines gambling, strategy and different skills. All poker variants involve betting as an intrinsic part of play, and determine the winner of each hand according to the combinations of players' cards, at least some of which remain hidden until the end of the hand. Poker games vary in the number of cards dealt, the number of shared or 'community' cards, the number of cards that remain hidden, and the betting procedures.
In most modern poker games the first round of betting begins with one or more of the players making some form of a forced bet (the blind or ante). In standard poker, each player bets according to the rank they believe their hand is worth as compared to the other players. The action then proceeds clockwise as each player in turn must either match (or 'call') the maximum previous bet, or fold, losing the amount bet so far and all further involvement in the hand. A player who matches a bet may also 'raise' (increase) the bet. The betting round ends when all players have either called the last bet or folded. If all but one player folds on any round, the remaining player collects the pot without being required to reveal their hand. If more than one player remains in contention after the final betting round, a showdown takes place where the hands are revealed, and the player with the winning hand takes the pot.
With the exception of initial forced bets, money is only placed into the pot voluntarily by a player who either believes the bet has positive expected value or who is trying to bluff other players for various strategic reasons. Thus, while the outcome of any particular hand significantly involves chance, the long-run expectations of the players are determined by their actions chosen on the basis of probability, psychology, and game theory.
Poker online has increased in popularity since the beginning of the 20th century and has gone from being primarily a recreational activity confined to small groups of enthusiasts to a widely popular activity, both for participants and spectators, including online, with many professional players and multimillion-dollar tournament prizes.
History[edit]
Poker was developed sometime during the early 19th century in the United States. Since those early beginnings, the game has grown to become an extremely popular pastime worldwide.
In the 1937 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle, R. F. Foster wrote: 'the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As-Nas.' By the 1990s some gaming historians including David Parlett started to challenge the notion that poker is a direct derivative of As-Nas. Developments in the 1970s led to poker becoming far more popular than it was before. Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began, in 1970.[1]
Gameplay[edit]
In casual play, the right to deal a hand typically rotates among the players and is marked by a token called a dealer button (or buck). In a casino, a house dealer handles the cards for each hand, but the button (typically a white plastic disk) is rotated clockwise among the players to indicate a nominal dealer to determine the order of betting. The cards are dealt clockwise around the poker table, one at a time.
One or more players are usually required to make forced bets, usually either an ante or a blind bet (sometimes both). The dealer shuffles the cards, the player on the chair to his or her right cuts, and the dealer deals the appropriate number of cards to the players one at a time, beginning with the player to his or her left. Cards may be dealt either face-up or face-down, depending on the variant of poker being played. After the initial deal, the first of what may be several betting rounds begins. Between rounds, the players' hands develop in some way, often by being dealt additional cards or replacing cards previously dealt. At the end of each round, all bets are gathered into the central pot.
At any time during a betting round, if one player bets, no opponents choose to call (match) the bet, and all opponents instead fold, the hand ends immediately, the bettor is awarded the pot, no cards are required to be shown, and the next hand begins. This is what makes bluffing possible. Bluffing is a primary feature of poker, one that distinguishes it from other vying games and from other games that make use of poker hand rankings.
At the end of the last betting round, if more than one player remains, there is a showdown, in which the players reveal their previously hidden cards and evaluate their hands. The player with the best hand according to the poker variant being played wins the pot. A poker hand comprises five cards; in variants where a player has more than five cards available to them, only the best five-card combination counts.
Casino Poker Chips
Variants[edit]
Poker Chip Weights
Poker variations are played where a 'high hand' or a 'low hand' may be the best desired hand. In other words, when playing a poker variant with 'low poker' the best hand is one that contains the lowest cards (and it can get further complicated by including or not including flushes and straights etc. from 'high hand poker'). So while the 'majority' of poker game variations are played 'high hand', where the best high 'straight, flush etc.' wins, there are poker variations where the 'worst hand' wins, such as 'low ball, acey-ducey, high-lo split etc. game variations'. To summarize, there can be variations that are 'high poker', 'low poker', and 'high low split'. In the case of 'high low split' the pot is divided among the best high hand and low hand.
Poker has many variations,[2][3] all following a similar pattern of play[4] and generally using the same hand ranking hierarchy. There are four main families of variants, largely grouped by the protocol of card-dealing and betting:
- Straight
- A complete hand is dealt to each player, and players bet in one round, with raising and re-raising allowed. This is the oldest poker family; the root of the game as now played was a game known as Primero, which evolved into the game three-card brag, a very popular gentleman's game around the time of the American Revolutionary War and still enjoyed in the U.K. today. Straight hands of five cards are sometimes used as a final showdown, but poker is almost always played in a more complex form to allow for additional strategy.
- Stud poker
- Cards are dealt in a prearranged combination of face-down and face-up rounds, or streets, with a round of betting following each. This is the next-oldest family; as poker progressed from three to five-card hands, they were often dealt one card at a time, either face-down or face-up, with a betting round between each. The most popular stud variant today, seven-card stud, deals two extra cards to each player (three face-down, four face-up) from which they must make the best possible 5-card hand.
- Draw poker
- A complete hand is dealt to each player, face-down, and after betting, players are allowed to attempt to change their hand (with the object of improving it) by discarding unwanted cards and being dealt new ones. Five-card draw is the most famous variation in this family.
- Community card poker
- Also known as 'flop poker', community card poker is a variation of stud poker. Players are dealt an incomplete hand of face-down cards, and then a number of face-up community cards are dealt to the center of the table, each of which can be used by one or more of the players to make a 5-card hand. Texas hold 'em and Omaha are two well-known variants of the community card family.
There are several methods for defining the structure of betting during a hand of poker. The three most common structures are known as 'fixed-limit', 'pot-limit', and 'no-limit'. In fixed-limit poker, betting and raising must be done by standardized amounts. For instance, if the required bet is X, an initial bettor may only bet X; if a player wishes to raise a bet, they may only raise by X. In pot-limit poker, a player may bet or raise any amount up to the size of the pot. When calculating the maximum raise allowed, all previous bets and calls, including the intending raiser's call, are first added to the pot. The raiser may then raise the previous bet by the full amount of the pot. In no-limit poker, a player may wager their entire betting stack at any point that they are allowed to make a bet. In all games, if a player does not have enough betting chips to fully match a bet, they may go 'all-in', allowing them to show down their hand for the amount of chips they have remaining.
Other games that use poker hand rankings may likewise be referred to as poker. Video poker is a single-player video game that functions much like a slot machine; most video poker machines play draw poker, where the player bets, a hand is dealt, and the player can discard and replace cards. Payout is dependent on the hand resulting after the draw and the player's initial bet.
Strip poker is a traditional poker variation where players remove clothing when they lose bets. Since it depends only on the basic mechanic of betting in rounds, strip poker can be played with any form of poker; however, it is usually based on simple variants with few betting rounds, like five card draw.
Another game with the poker name, but with a vastly different mode of play, is called Acey-Deucey or Red Dog poker. This game is more similar to Blackjack in its layout and betting; each player bets against the house, and then is dealt two cards. For the player to win, the third card dealt (after an opportunity to raise the bet) must have a value in-between the first two. Payout is based on the odds that this is possible, based on the difference in values of the first two cards. Other poker-like games played at casinos against the house include three card poker and pai gow poker.
Computer programs[edit]
A variety of computer poker players have been developed by researchers at the University of Alberta, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Auckland amongst others.
In a January 2015 article[5] published in Science, a group of researchers mostly from the University of Alberta announced that they 'essentially weakly solved' heads-up limit Texas Hold 'em with their development of their Cepheus poker bot. The authors claimed that Cepheus would lose at most 0.001 big blinds per game on average against its worst-case opponent, and the strategy is thus so 'close to optimal' that 'it can't be beaten with statistical significance within a lifetime of human poker playing'.[6]
Poker Chip Dimensions
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^'World Series of Poker Retrospective: Horseshoe History'. gaming.unlv.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-13.
- ^Richard D. Harroch, Lou Krieger. Poker for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2010
- ^Reuben, Stewart 2001. Starting out in Poker. London: Everyman/Mind Sports. ISBN1-85744-272-5
- ^Sklansky, David. The Theory of Poker. Two Plus Two Pub, 1999.
- ^Bowling, M.; Burch, N.; Johanson, M.; Tammelin, O. (2015). 'Heads-up limit hold'em poker is solved'(PDF). Science. 347 (6218): 145–149. CiteSeerX10.1.1.697.72. doi:10.1126/science.1259433. PMID25574016.
- ^Computer program 'perfect at poker' (2015-01-08), BBC
External links[edit]
| Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: poker |
| Wikiquote has quotations related to: Poker |
| Look up poker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Size Of A Poker Chip
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Poker. |
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