Casino Tokens

Casino tokens 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 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.

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. They generally have no value outside of the casino, though in Las Vegas, some casinos might honor chips from other casinos and 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. Lastly, the chips are considered to be an integral part of the casino environment, and replacing them with some alternate currency would be unpopular.

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. Whiles 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.

A standard 300 piece set of Plastic Injection chips often sold as clay composite chips

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 chips are worth up to $100,000 and the most popular way to collect and trade is on 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.

Table Stakes Rules

All casinos and many home games play poker by what are called table stakes rules, which state that each player starts each deal with a certain stake, and plays that deal with that stake. A player may not remove money from the table or add money from his or her pocket during the play of a hand. In essence, table stakes rules creates a maximum and a minimum buy-in amount for cash game poker as well as rules for adding and removing the stake from play. A player also may not take a portion of their money or stake off the table, unless they opt to leave the game and remove their entire stake from play. Players are not allowed to hide or misrepresent the amount of their stake from other players and must truthfully disclose the amount when asked.

Common among inexperienced players is the act of "going south" after winning a big pot, which is to take a portion of your stake out of play, often as an attempt to hedge one's risk after a win. This is also known as "ratholing" or "reducing" and, while totally permissible in most other casino games, is not permitted in poker.

Table stakes are the rule in most cash poker games because it allows players with vastly different bankrolls a reasonable amount of protection when playing with one another. They are usually set in relation to the blinds. For example, in a $1/2 No Limit cash game, the minimum stake is often set at $40 while maximum stake is often set at $200, or 20 and 100 big blinds respectively.

This also requires some special rules to handle the case when a player is faced with a bet that he cannot call with his available stake.

Chips Poker

Poker chips are fabricated with complicated graphics and edge spot patterns intending to make them difficult to counterfeit. The process used to make these poker chips is a trade secret and expensive - typically done on high pressure compression molding machines. The typical material of construction for poker chips is not clay as is sometimes believed, but a ceramic material with clay added for texture and weight. The breakable, clay poker chips of the 1960s and 1970s are no longer manufactured. The clay composition of modern chips varies by manufacturer, and is typically very slight (1-10%).

Casino poker chips are special tokens representing a fixed amount of money. The chips used in American Casinos generally weigh 10 grams each. The chips sold for home use vary much more, depending on manufacturer and construction.