Types and Styles of Professional Poker Chips
Professional poker chips are essential for an enjoyable experience when paying any game of poker, whether it is a friendly home poker game or a high stakes Texas holdem championship.
There are many and varied types and styles of professional poker chips available, these differ in size, weight, materials used in manufacture and graphics.
You can either purchase plain poker chips which have no set value printed on them, which offers you more flexibility to set your own poker chip values, or you can alternatively buy poker chips with pre set dollar values already printed on them such as $1, $5, $25, $100 etc, this makes it easier for every player to instantly know how much the chip is worth when counting their stack or betting in a Texas holdem poker hand.
Often, professional poker chips come in sets, with nice aluminium box to hold your chips in. These poker chip sets can be 100pcs, 300pcs, 500pcs, and 1000pcs. The mix of chip denominations and colours is usually pre set, but you may be able to have a custom poker chip set made to suit your own individual requirements.
We will now investigate the various factors that affect the poker chip, such as size, weight and materials used in the manufacture of professional poker chips.
Poker chip size
The international casino standard for size of a professional poker chip is 39mm in diameter. Many cheap poker chip sets are smaller than this, and don’t feel quite right in the hand. Make sure the poker set you are thinking of buying is the correct casino size of 39mm.
Poker chip weight
It is a very common misconception that the official weight of a casino poker chip is 11.5 grams. This is nonsense, and you can check for yourself by going to a casino. Buy some small denomination chips like $2, $5 and $10 then take them home and weigh them on a set of kitchen scales.
You will be surprised to find that most casino chips are actually quite lighter than 11.5 grams. Also, different casino’s have different weights. Most casino chips will fall somewhere in between 9 and 11 grams.
So there is actually no set weight that is the absolute standard to have.
Be assured that if you are purchasing a set of professional poker chips, quality is more important than heavy weight, you see heavier is not necessarily better.
It is advised to concentrate more on manufacturing quality and materials than weight.
Poker chip materials
Professional poker chips can be made from varied materials, but most common are ABS, ceramic, clay and a mixture of both which is called composite.
Stay away from cheap plastic poker chip sets, these are as cheap and nasty as they sound and look!
You can be confident in purchasing a poker chip set that is made from any of the above materials, again it comes down to personal preference of the look and feel of the poker chip. You will be happier in the long run if you choose a poker chip set that is visually appealing to your senses and you can easily define the different chip values.
Be careful of selecting chips that are very similar in colour across the different values in the set, it will be hard to tell them apart in low light. Look for colours that you can easily tell apart!
So when selecting a professional poker chip set, just steer away from cheap plastic sets, stay with recognised materials and a design you like and is easy to play with, and you will be set for an awesome game of poker!
This is a guest post by James Peter. James is a fairly well-known Poker Games and Poker tool junkie. He (guest) post on Types and Style of professional poker chips
Professional poker chips are essential for an enjoyable experience when paying any game of poker, whether it is a friendly home poker game or a high stakes Texas holdem championship.
There are many and varied types and styles of professional poker chips available, these differ in size, weight, materials used in manufacture and graphics.
You can either purchase plain poker chips which have no set value printed on them, which offers you more flexibility to set your own poker chip values, or you can alternatively buy poker chips with pre set dollar values already printed on them such as $1, $5, $25, $100 etc, this makes it easier for every player to instantly know how much the chip is worth when counting their stack or betting in a Texas holdem poker hand.
Often, professional poker chips come in sets, with nice aluminium box to hold your chips in. These poker chip sets can be 100pcs, 300pcs, 500pcs, and 1000pcs. The mix of chip denominations and colours is usually pre set, but you may be able to have a custom poker chip set made to suit your own individual requirements.
We will now investigate the various factors that affect the poker chip, such as size, weight and materials used in the manufacture of professional poker chips.
Poker chip size
The international casino standard for size of a professional poker chip is 39mm in diameter. Many cheap poker chip sets are smaller than this, and don’t feel quite right in the hand. Make sure the poker set you are thinking of buying is the correct casino size of 39mm.
Poker chip weight
It is a very common misconception that the official weight of a casino poker chip is 11.5 grams. This is nonsense, and you can check for yourself by going to a casino. Buy some small denomination chips like $2, $5 and $10 then take them home and weigh them on a set of kitchen scales.
You will be surprised to find that most casino chips are actually quite lighter than 11.5 grams. Also, different casino’s have different weights. Most casino chips will fall somewhere in between 9 and 11 grams.
So there is actually no set weight that is the absolute standard to have.
Be assured that if you are purchasing a set of professional poker chips, quality is more important than heavy weight, you see heavier is not necessarily better.
It is advised to concentrate more on manufacturing quality and materials than weight.
Poker chip materials
Professional poker chips can be made from varied materials, but most common are ABS, ceramic, clay and a mixture of both which is called composite.
Stay away from cheap plastic poker chip sets, these are as cheap and nasty as they sound and look!
You can be confident in purchasing a poker chip set that is made from any of the above materials, again it comes down to personal preference of the look and feel of the poker chip. You will be happier in the long run if you choose a poker chip set that is visually appealing to your senses and you can easily define the different chip values.
Be careful of selecting chips that are very similar in colour across the different values in the set, it will be hard to tell them apart in low light. Look for colours that you can easily tell apart!
So when selecting a professional poker chip set, just steer away from cheap plastic sets, stay with recognised materials and a design you like and is easy to play with, and you will be set for an awesome game of poker!
This is a guest post by James Peter. James is a fairly well-known Poker Games and Poker tool junkie. He (guest) post on Types and Style of professional poker chips
