As the UIGEA of 2006 has pretty much ruled all forms of internet poker illegal, the country has seen an explosion in popularity of home-style poker games. It’s not just actual home poker games I’m talking about, but also those that different organizations put together on a local level, in pubs or other public places.
These games are not allowed to award any direct cash rewards to their participants and winners, but nonetheless, the need for poker accessories and especially poker chips is there. You can’t really play a live poker game without cards and chips.
What exactly do you have to be on the lookout for when searching for clay poker chips to buy? The internet is pretty much loaded with websites dealing with poker chips, and you can find them on ebay too…Before you even start exploring different dealers, you need to ask yourself what you’re really after. After that, read up a bit on poker chips, as there seem to be a number of myths hovering around these poker accessories.
If you’re looking for authentic casino chips, you know, the ones that are being used in casinos, you might as well forget it. If someone promises to deliver you such chips, you can almost be 100% sure he’s conning you. The reason is, there are no authentic casino chips available for sale to the public. We all know how strict casinos are when it comes to money matters in their household.
Well, the chips that they use inside, represent real money. You figure it out. Would you let something that represents real money in your business be sold publicly? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, casinos go to great lengths to create absolutely unique chips, with a unique composition of the substance they’re mode of, in order to make counterfeiting more difficult if not impossible. If you’re on the hunt for such chips, try stealing a few from the casino you play at, you won’t get your hands on any otherwise. If you do steal some though, you’ll never be able to cash them in, so it’s not exactly a bargain…
If you’re looking for 100% clay chips, again, forget about them. There are no 100% clay chips on the market for several reasons:
1) They’d be just too darn expensive to make, and nobody (or very few people) would buy them for a price that would justify its production cost.
2) Clay is not exactly the most resistant matter when it comes to repetitive handling. 100% clay chips just wouldn’t last long enough to justify their price.
Poker chips that you’ll find on the market, are usually made of a resin-clay composite. That lends them the "clay” look and the resin confers them resistance too.
When you do find poker chips that you decide to purchase check if their weight is below 10.5 grams per chip. Anything heavier than that may suggest there’s some type of metal insert in the chip. Not that metal is a bad thing, but if you’re after the real McCoy I see no reason why you should settle for anything less.
Even if your chips are within that weight range, make sure you talk to the shop you’re buying them from and check with the salesperson that the chips are indeed a clay-resin mix and not some sort of cheap plastic.
Remember that there’s always a possibility to order custom made chip sets directly from the producer. That way, you can specify exactly what sort of chips you need, how you want them to look and what you want them to be made out of. I’m pretty sure that for the right price, they’ll make you poker chips out of the most unlikely materials out there.
