The patterns around a chip’s edges help ensure uniqueness of designĮach manufacturer has its own names for its various three or four core templates, each of which is customisable to varying degrees, and comes in sizes ranging from 39 millimetres in diameter to 48 millimetres. There are many other high-street outlets that produce the very cheapest chips - the thin, coloured plastic discs that might be blown away by a hefty belch - but when a casino wants the best, they essentially need to go to one of three places. If you’ve ever held a chip in a major casino, particularly if you’ve played table games other than poker, you’ve almost certainly been handling a product from of one of three companies: Abbiati, from Italy, Matsui, from Japan, or Gaming Partners International (GPI), originally a French company which has recently been acquired by the Japanese firm Angel. It’s even more important at the casino tables outside the poker room, where each chip carries a cash value far higher than what it cost to produce. They need to be solid and secure, of uniform size and thickness. Most importantly they need to do their job: that is, to be reliable stand-ins for cash or tournament points, to be exchanged back when the time is right. And manufacturers even take into account the sounds they make as they click-clack together, keeping customers happily gambling. They need to be distinctively coloured, both to be aesthetically pleasing and for reasons of consistency and security. They are also how the same players while away the many dead hours at the tables: they’re for riffling and stacking in pretty towers and hopefully bagging at the end of the day. Chips are the very tools with which poker players set their plans in motion.

Pokerstars 500 piece chipset