If you’ve ever played poker, you make out that there’s no superior feeling than piling a giant size of poker chips and showing your opposition that you’re a poker player to anticipate at the game.
But do you know that poker chips in broad are a fairly new concept? It’s true. The history of poker chips didn’t begin with actual poker chips. The home poker game and even poker live games today are greatly differ from the game our poker-loving ancestors used to play.
Earlier in the nineteenth century, poker chips didn’t even exist. Poker players used to play poker online with tiny nuggets of gold and even gold dust.
Obviously, some sort of consistency was urgently essential. So the gaming houses began making their own standardized substitutes – pieces of clay, bones and ivory. Sadly, these “standards” were easy to fake, so the gaming houses began to brand those pieces of clay, bones and ivory with exclusive symbols and traits.
Faking remained a hitch, so by 1880s, companies began creating clay poker chips, giving birth to an entire industry and eventually changing the way the planet played poker.
What is poker chips made from?
After all, casinos only use clay poker chips, right? Actually, you’d be wrong. Poker tokens aren’t 100% clay – even the ones you find in the big casinos. They’re actually made from a composite that includes clay, but is much more durable than clay alone.
In addition to clay composite chips, you’ll also find ceramic chips at some Las Vegas casinos. Ceramic casino tokens are also popular for home poker games.
You might have the idea that casinos use only clay poker chips, right? But you are wrong! Poker chips are not made of 100% clay, even the ones you can find in the big casinos. They are created from a composite which includes clay, but is much more robust that the clay one.
Besides clay composite chips, you’ll also find ceramic chips at a few casinos. Ceramic poker tokens are also admired for home poker games.
The truth of forging poker chips
The history of poker chips engages plenty forging. Thus if you’ve never pondered whether modern-day poker chips can be faked, you’re probably being dishonest. It’s a fair query, and a logical one. Poker chips look pretty simple. It’s a spherical disc with a nice pattern on it.
A counterfeiter just needs to figure out what the design is, copy the disc, and the chips are good to go, right?
No! Poker chips are in fact harder to forge than any currency. Casino owners are familiar with the past of poker chips and the counterfeit that goes along with that past. The poker industry has taken all sorts of security measures to ensure that the chips can’t be faked. And if they can be faked, it’s easy for a cashier to spot a forgery.
Every poker chips are designed to have some weight, texture and feel. If you can copy that, you still require dealing with stuff such as microchips as many casinos embed their chips with them, serial numbers, and lots of other stuff which you have possibly never thought of.
The colour code
The leading colour of most poker chips is linked to their denominations: $1 chips are white; $5 chips are red, $25 chips are green and $100 chips are black. The tournament poker chips do not normally follow this or any other steady colour pattern.
Understanding Poker Chips
When you play poker game live, you’re exchanging your cash for poker chips. But the way the poker tokens work rely on what kind of game you’re playing. When you purchase into a poker event, you may get $1,500 in poker chips, however the buy-in for the game is only $50. The $1,500 in chips in fact holds no money value, so you couldn’t go trade the chips for money.
Casinos use dissimilar poker chips for money games and events, so there’s no danger of the casino losing cash by handing over money for event tokens that aren’t really worth everything.
Within a casino, poker chips, the ones having cash value, work just like money. A player can use his poker chips to pay for almost anything on the property like a dinner, a thing from the gift shop, tips. Certainly, the rules vary from casino to casino, but this is the benchmark.
The costliest poker chips ever made
The casinos at Las Vegas are infamous for having dangerously big chips. After all, no sombre Vegas high roller wishes to play poker games with $5 poker chips. The Paris Las Vegas has a $100,000 poker token, and according to the Nevada Gaming Commission, plenty of casinos there have casino plaques in the $1 million & $5 million marks. With the sanction of the Nevada Gaming Commission, casinos can make denominations of nearly any worth they wish, so long as they have the money to support it.
But let us tell you, it’s not just Vegas casinos which can make poker chips of such huge value. Just a few years earlier, a luxury poker chip maker designed a poker chip set worth $7.5 million. It came in an alligator skin case. In addition, each chip featured many gems and jewels. There were over 22,000 of them in all, summing up over 1,000 carats. Now that’s one of the high stakes poker game.
Poker chips for home
The poker chips of the mid-2000s were a big bonus for the makers of clay composite poker chips. Players who loved playing online poker found a similar liking for poker live. Thus, poker players young and old began organising home poker games.
These players wanted real poker chips, identical to the ones casinos used. So the manufacturers of chips began making them in huge numbers. When the poker craze started, the price of the chips went high on the market. However, as more and more manufacturers began to make them, the prices fell. Today you can get a good set of poker chips at reasonable price.
And if you’re serious about organising home poker games, you can in fact pick up your own custom-made poker chips. A few makers will let you make customizable poker chips. They cost more than normal poker tokens, however if you’re serious about poker game, there’s no better way to show it off to your competitors.
The shuffling of poker chips
We still haven’t mentioned about the shuffling of poker chips. You might have noticed in the movies, how the characters playing poker live shuffle the poker chips. The players jingle their chips and twist them around their fingers in bizarre ways. They are not normally trying to brag their moves of poker chip shuffle. Rather, they usually start shuffling chips when they are deep thoughts about their game tactics.
Why just see other players shuffling the poker chips and why not learn to do it for yourself.
Begin with two piles of poker chips, placing four chips in each pile. Lay the piles alongside and put your ring finger on the right pile, as your thumb and index finger catch hold of the left pile. Keep your middle finger lifted out of the path for the moment, which will come into play soon.
Apply mild pressure on both piles and bring them together. Excessive pressure will mash up the poker chips and make a mess of the piles. Keep your pressure steady and gentle and the piles of poker chips will buckle.
As the poker chips buckle up, utilize your middle finger and guide them to interlock with each other. Keep the pressure steady and the chips stacks will now interlock. Congratulations, you have completed the poker chip shuffle.
Remember, chip shuffling takes a bit of practice. With little patience, you should get the grip of it in no time.
Happy playing