The history of the poker chip is actually not a story about poker chips but one about the chip as a substitute for money in general!

"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."

The Beginning

When gambling became widespread in the 18th century, one difficulty was that people who gambled had different types of coins or valuables for wagering. To solve this problem some gambling venues (no, the Vegas-style casino wasn't invented yet) offered gamblers substitutes like pieces of ivory, bones or clay. This was a nifty solution to the problem but of course resulted in a second problem: gamblers began to forge substitutes. As a result, gambling establishments began to brand their substitutes, the only surviving relic of which is the large plate (check) with a printed value.

Same Old, Same Old

When casinos began to flourish in the early 20th century, the chip as we know it today was used across the board (across the felt?) but the size differed from casino to casino, with some establishments even using chips of various sizes and materials for different values. The more valuable a chip was, the bigger it was. But once again the same old chip-forging problem resurfaced. And once again, the casinos responded in the same old way - each casino created specially designed, hard-to-replicate chips that were unique to their venue.

As the 20th century progressed, with independent chip manufacturers delivering to a multitude of casinos, the chips became standardized in size, but the materials used for them, such as clay or expensive ivory, still varied widely. Manufacturers now use high-pressure techniques combined with a mix of composite to produce chips. To hinder forgery the casinos even include a microchip in their chips. Today, a standard chip is 39 millimeters in diameter with a weight ranging from 8.5 grams to 20.5 grams.

Thanks to the ongoing poker boom, high-quality chips are produced in unprecedented quantities and have thus become affordable to the general public. It wasn't that long ago that one had to pay a couple hundred dollars for a quality set of poker chips, but the same sets are now sold for a fraction of that price.

Poker Chips Value

For any poker player that is playing live games or in a brick and motor set up, the poker chips has a lot of information to reveal about the player. The way a player handles the poker chips tells tons and tons of data about their mental disposition in relation to the hand they hold. The way the player shuffles, the way they arrange their chips, the way they rotate their chips, the very way they touch the chips, the way they let go the all ins and every bit of poker chips handling is a rich information for anyone to make a playing decision against any player. You need ot understand how to play poker with poker chips.

There are some players that tend to shuffle the chips as they keep thinking hard on something, if some player has already taken a considerable amount of poker chips and have been taking a few chips out of it and then after making too much of thinking if they are going to make a bet, by putting in all the stakes to the pot, it means that they are some where in a good position.

Say for example a player has for AA in pockets and has seen another A in the flop, in this game the board is already in his favor, at such times the player is likely to slow play or go all in. If the player has decided to go all in he would for a minute just touch through all his poker chips and arrange and rearrange them, after sometime he would just pick up some 4 chips from green color and some 4 chips from the blue color and he would inter shuffle them, and then think over again and at last he would push in all the chips that he did arrange the first time the flops hit the board and it was time for him to act.

In the above cited example, the player has got excited about seen the Ace in the board and has hit a trip Ace, which is an unbeatable hand and in an excitement he happens to touch all his poker chips and rearrange them, because he is sure that he is going to go all ins with his monstrous chance, but he wants to pretend that he is just taking a risk by going all in, though he is truly not. As a gesture of pretense, he picks up some 4 green chips and 4 blue chips from his poker chips and shuffles them pretending to think, and that is the kind of information that poker chips can reveal.

How Poker Chips Work

Poker chips, also called casino tokens, are small objects used to represent money when gambling, whether you're at a casino, or just playing a friendly game of cards at home. Common types of chips are made of colored metal, molded clay, and plastic. These chips vary in cost and style, but they all serve the same function – you don't have to put real cash on the table. In a casino, you'll buy your chips at a cashier station. Inside the casino, these chips are the same as money, but once you're outside, they're just pieces of plastic or clay. In Las Vegas, you may find that some casinos honor chips from other establishments, but this isn't always the case.

We use poker chips instead of money because they're easier to use and carry. They also make it a lot harder to steal money or use counterfeit bills. That's not a big problem if you're playing a kitchen table game, but can be a real issue for casinos and other establishments. Uniform size and easy stackability makes it easier to count chips than it is to count bills. That means that you and your opponents will be able to tell how much is being bid. Casinos also like poker chips because most people are more willing to gamble more when they use them than when they're putting cash on the table.

The first poker chips came into being in the 19th century, when players used any small object to represent money. Pieces of gold, chips made of bone or ivory, slips of paper, and objects made from shellac all showed up on the table. It wasn't until the 1880s that standardized chips came into being. These were made from clay, and came in many styles and colors, but were mostly red, white, blue and yellow. Nowadays, we still use compression molded clay for poker chips, but they're not made of pure clay. The last chips to be made that way date from the 1950s. More durable materials, like sand and chalk, are combined with the clay, although the exact mix is considered a trade secret, and each manufacturer has their own way of doing things. Clay chips are then covered with paper, which might have graphics printed on it, and coated in a film of thin plastic. Ceramic chips are also available. There are several poker rooms which offer no deposit poker rooms around you.

Molded plastic chips are easy to find in gaming and hobby stores for home use, but almost no plastic chips are used by players in casinos. The one exception is the Bud Jones brand, which is actually not available for home markets. In Europe, you may also see mother of pearl chips, and different shapes for poker chips that have a higher value. In America, high value chips, like thousand and five thousand dollar varieties are oversized for easy identification. The general public almost never sees chips of a higher value than this, since they're used in high limit rooms. Higher value chips aren't actually chips, but card-like gaming plaques with serial numbers printed on them. Each casino uses their own set of chips, to make sure that it's hard to slip in a counterfeit.