Whether you’re playing at an online casino or walking into a brick-and-mortar establishment, you’ll come across casino chips. They’re most commonly used for table games, such as blackjack, roulette, poker, craps and baccarat.
For many, a stack of chips makes them think of a poker game, with a player pushing to the centre, declaring that they’re all-in. You’ll want to get familiar with these chips to enjoy exclusive live casino games, poker with friends or a game of blackjack on your next casino night.
Read on to find out about casino chip values and the most valuable ones ever created.
What Are Casino Chips?
There are several reasons why casinos use chips instead of cash. It keeps table betting much neater in real and virtual environments. They stack and fit into the betting spaces on the table so that bets are clear and not ambiguous.
Once you know the colours and the values, it also creates a neat way to bet using set increments. For many casino players, chips are now thought of as lucky symbols, with some keeping hold of one from a significant win instead of cashing it in.
Standard Chip Values
These days, most chips will have a value written on them, especially online. However, you can find plenty of poker sets that use traditional blank chips. The values are usually set in dollars, but converting to pounds gives you an equivalent amount for UK play. Here’s a quick guide to the colours you might see and what they mean:
White – $1 or around £0.60
Yellow – $2 or £1.20
Red – $5 or £3.00
Blue – $10 or £6
Grey – $20 or £12
Green – $25 or £15
Orange – $50 or £30
Black – $100 or £60
Pink – $250 or £150
Purple – $500 or £300
At poker tournaments, where stakes can get high, you’ll see different colours and values compared to the casino. For example, the WSOP uses a dark green chip for 25,000 and light purple for 100,000. There are also chips worth 500,000 or more, which are bigger in size.
Most Expensive Poker Chips
When handling chips, you’ll be sticking to your budget or at least the table limits. You’ll likely handle a few higher value chips, but nothing that comes close to the most valuable poker chips ever created.
The most expensive sets don’t just write a high value on a plastic disk. They use valuable materials, such as diamonds, rubies, gold, white gold and one of the rarest metals, Rhodium, to show how much they’re worth.
In the 1960s, Geoffery Parker, the luxury board game manufacturer, made the world’s most expensive poker set. With an alligator case, gold, rubies and sapphires, the set is valued at over £6 million. There are 384 chips in the set, and even the dealer button has a high value, as it’s made from 18k white gold and diamonds.
Other expensive sets owe their value to their materials or their age; for example, you can get vintage sets from Cartier worth around £25,000. The French luxury goods designer has also made a set out of mother of pearl, plus there are ancient mammoth ivory and meteorite poker chips worth around £100,000.
Final Thoughts
A nice poker set can make a casual game with friends a bit more fun. Poker fans and casino lovers are likely to seek out more expensive sets, where exclusivity, rarity or association with big wins adds to the value.
A diamond-encrusted one takes the passion for poker to a different level altogether. You might have other plans for your big win. Anyway, knowing the colours and values of casino chips is a good start for enjoying online casino games for now.