| Learn About Poker Chips | |
| Types Of chips |
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Types Of Chips While there are hundreds of varieties of poker chips on the market today, they basically fall into two groups. They are either The Real Deal (Casino Quality) or they?re Posers (Imitators)? Nearly 99% of the chips you come across in the consumer market are Posers. Some Posers work just fine, but they?re an entirely different product. Casino Quality Chips (from here out, referred to as The Real Deal) are defined as chips made by the same manufactures that make chips for Casinos, using the same materials, processes and quality control. The Real Deal is a lot more rare than you might think for the simple reason that there are only four manufacturers that outfit all of the casinos in Las Vegas and most of the other casinos in the world. The fact is that these manufacturers prefer most people don?t know who they are for the simple fact that they are essentially printing currency. The Real Deal chip comes in two materials, which are clay and ceramic. When I talk about clay, understand that true clay chips have not been produced in over 75 years. The chips of today that are referred to as clay are made of a composition of materials heavier and more durable than clay. The ceramic chip is made of a high-density polymer composite? The Imitator Chip (from here out, referred to as The Poser), AKA ?clay?, ?clay composite?, ?casino grade?, ?casino style?, ?casino quality? or any other deceitful name a poker chip vendor can come up with to get you to buy are made by many manufacturers, mostly in China. In fact, most of these chips are nothing close to Real Deal chips and the majorities are nothing more than injection-molded plastic. These chips have absolutely flooded the market in the past couple years and usually sell for less than 25 cents a chip. Now don?t get me wrong, it?s not that I hate The Poser or the Chinese. I just hate the fact that some vendors (most) will tell you anything to unload the stuff they got stuck with. If your on a budget and not ready to make a serious investment in chips; there are some (not many) decent Quality Posers available that won?t break you or embarrass you at your next home game? |
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Separating The Real Deal From The Posers Shopping for poker chips can be a confusing and frustrating task. There are literally hundreds of styles and colors to choose from and the vast majority of these chips are nothing close to what they?re advertised as. You can find different varieties of these chips pretty much everywhere online and in retail stores now. So the question is ? How do you tell the difference between The Real Deal and The Posers??? Let?s start with PRICE? This is definitely your first clue! Real Deal Chips cost around $1.00 to $1.50 per chip, some more, some less, depending on style and quality. If a chip sells for less than 75 cents a piece, it?s not likely a Real Deal Chip (unless your shopping at PokerShak). Usually the price difference is much more distinct as most low-end chips sell for less than 25 cents and the really cheaply made ones sell for around 10 cents per chip. WEIGHT is your next clue? NOW LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY!!! The weight of an authentic casino chip is between 8.5 and 10 grams. Every chip you?ll find in a Las Vegas casino is in this weight range. Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming amount of confusing and conflicting misinformation about the weight of poker chips on the web. I?ll tell you why when I discuss Recent History Of The Poker Chip. In the meantime, LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY AGAIN!!! 11.5 gram IS NOT the standard weight of casino chips. Neither is 12, 13, 14 or 15-gram chips ? They never have been or will be a Real Deal chip weight!!! Even if you know quite a bit about poker chips, you might not know that in a lot of cases there is a SIZE difference. The standardized diameter of The Real Deal Chip is 39mm (you probably knew that), but did you know that the vast majority of low-end (made in China) are 40mm in diameter. Additionally, low-end chips are sometimes thicker than Real Deal. Let?s face it, 1mm is hardly noticeable to the naked eye and you probably can?t tell the difference in diameter or thickness by holding them, but you might have a problem fitting them in a standard casino chip tray? The centerpiece on a Real Deal Clay Chip is an INLAY, not a sticker. An inlay is compression-molded into the chip and cannot be removed without destroying the chip. Posers have stickers, which indicate they can be applied or removed separately from the manufacturing process. There is a difference in MOLDS when it comes to Real Deal Clay Chips and Posers. Real Deal Clay Chips are compression-molded, which means that two sides of a metallic mold are slammed together to form a coin-shaped poker chip. Posers on the other hand are injection-molded using plastic, which leave a small pimple on the face of the chip usually in one of the grooves. You know you have a problem when you?re concerned about the SOUND of your poker chips. However, it?s one of the easiest ways to separate The Real Deal from The Posers. I can recognize the sound of a Real Deal Clay Chip from across the room. OK, I admit it ? I have a problem!!! They say the first step to curing a problem is to buy some Paulson?s or something like that. There?s nothing quite like the sound of a good clay chip; it sounds kind of soft and comforting? Real Deal Ceramic casino chips were introduced in the 1980s as an alternative to clay for production speed and graphic detail reasons. They were created to mimic the sound of clay. While they?re fairly close, they have a higher pitch than clay. The Poser, especially the metal insert chips that are widely available in 11.5 gram have an entirely different metallic sound. I didn?t go into a lot of detail on trying to explain sounds for a reason. I think you?ll be better served by actually hearing the difference. On our Steals & Deals page you can click the Product Preview and listen for yourself. |
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Recent History Of The Poker Chip ? A Story Of Greed, Lies, Desperation And More Lies How did all this confusion start over 11.5 gram chips being official weight of casino chips? Well our story starts around the turn of the century when the Bicycle Interlocking Plastic Chip ruled the consumer market. Come on!!! You remember those little lightweight, red, white and blue chips that you could pick up in any pharmacy or department store for about $5.00 per hundred. While there are numerous and substantial differences between Bicycle chips and real casino chips, the most easily described difference is weight. So the low-cost Chinese manufacturers entered the poker chip market and they rightly identified the consumer?s 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 the Bicycle chip. 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 were expensive and hard to find. The casual buyer wouldn?t even know they were available. Still, consumers wanted chips ?just like in the casinos? and 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 swear that real casino chips weigh 11.5 grams. If you 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. 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 wanted to hear was that the chips were 11.5 grams and they would buy them. 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 started realizing that they?ve been ripped-off and their chips were nothing like real casino chips, they got a little pissed off and started to vent. This venting naturally got published all over the web. Suddenly, poker chip retailers had been caught in their dirty little lie and faced the wrath of the consumers. Desperate, retailers are now stuck with all of these junk chips in their inventory and unless they can come up with a new lie, their going to have to eat all of this junk Chinese food. Since the widely held perception is that all casino chips are clay (not true) and heavy, the new lie becomes the two nasty little words, ?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. 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. The retailers just have to weed thru all that 11.5-gram propaganda now. |
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Buyer Beware Hundreds of millions of chips just don?t disappear over night or in a couple years for that matter. There are still tremendous amounts of this junk in retailers and manufactures inventory today and they will literally tell the consumer anything to get rid of them. Retailers and manufactures alike have even stooped to an all-time low by advertising their chips as ?pure clay?, ?100% clay?, ?real clay? and any other flat-out lie to get you to buy. Today, the consumer is starting to become a bit more educated about poker chips. To the educated consumer, 11.5-gram, metal insert and ?clay composite? are all good telltale signs to run like hell in the other direction. So now that the 11.5-gram metal insert chip is starting to be exposed, what are the blatant liars to do now? The answer is very simple; lie some more. There are two new groups telling two new sets of lies in the market today. The first group addresses the 11.5-gram debacle by manufacturing 12, 13, 14 and 15-gram chips in hopes of differentiating themselves. A second group of the market takes on the metal insert issue and comes out with a chip that doesn?t have a metal slug in it. Both groups use the same old lies like ?just like the casinos use?, ?casino quality?, ?casino grade? etc. etc. etc. To top that off, both groups in many cases are advertising their chips as clay even though they?re still plastic. If you can?t tell, I?M MAD AS HELL at the lengths these scumbags will go to. The audacity of some of these companies is remarkable. With all the misinformation that has been spread in the last few years, it?s hard to blame the consumer for not knowing any better. In fact, many chip retailers are confused about what they are actually selling. In my opinion, ignorance is no excuse. If you?re going to sell a product to the public, you need to know your product and not advertise just any description you?re provided with. At PokerShak, we?re all about education. If you know anyone shopping for poker chips, please have them read this article. The only way we can stop these lies from perpetuating is through education? |
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All Posers Are Not Created Equal You may have the idea that I have something against The Poser. Not true! I have something against false advertisement? A quality Poser can be the perfect option for someone on a budget or someone that just plays occasionally. The problem is that there are so many chips out there that are manufactured with the cheapest materials. Some materials can vary as much as fifty times in cost. Ordering Posers online is a crapshoot at best. Unless you can handle, feel and play with them, you?re gambling your money. There are three main attributes your looking for in a quality Poser. First is the feel of the chip. You want your chip to have a soft feel to them, not a hard plastic feel. This texture is accomplished by adding rubber to the plastic during manufacturing. Some manufactures have the ratio so good that the chips actually have a clay feel. Second is the ability to stack the chips. Many of the cheap chips on the market are so slippery that it?s almost impossible to stack them or perform tricks with them. A good stackable chip can be accomplished by having the right ratio of rubber and by texturing. Third is looks. If you?re going to spend your money on poker chips, they might as well look good. There are some very good-looking Posers and some very bad-looking Posers on the market today. At PokerShak, we test and try every product we sell so that you can be sure your getting a quality chip. Be sure to check out our Quality Posers section. |
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Recommended Poker Chip Set Size
For denominations, we recommend you stick with 3 or 4 consecutive denominations (i.e. $1, $5, and $25 chips where each consecutive chip jumps in value 4-5 fold between denominations). If you go with 3 denominations, get quantities with a ratio of 60:30:10 percent from lowest to highest denominations (i.e. on a 500 chip set, you?d get 300x $1 chips, 150x $5 chips, and 50x $25 chips). If you go with 4 denominations, get quantities with a ratio of 40:40:10:10 percent from lowest to highest. We hope you found this article to be helpful and informative. Don?t let your friends buy a set of chips without first reading this article. The only way we can stop false advertisement is through education? Thanks ? Robert ?nutz? Smith |
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