Poker Chip Colors Meaning
If your only gaming experience is at the casinos of Atlantic City, you've probably never given the chips you used much thought.
- Poker Terminology & Meanings. The game of poker has its own slang or “poker talk.” If you are new to poker, learning the poker slang will greatly improve your knowledge of the game. From the small blind to the straight flush, here is a poker glossary of the important poker terms to.
- The color of a poker chip denotes the amount of currency it represents. In home games where plain plastic chips are used, the values assigned can change depending on the stakes being played for.
- Although casino chips vary greatly in design and can be quite colorful, their primary colors are generally fairly standard by denomination across casinos. 1 Standard US colors 2 California colors 3 Wynn Las Vegas colors 4 References and Sources $1: white; blue (more common in Las Vegas and much of the Western and Midwestern US) $2.50: pink (rarely used for poker; however, see Pink chip game.
In the city by the sea, every casino has a white $1 chip. Likewise, every club uses pink $2.50 chips, red $5 chips, green $25 chips, and so on. That's how things are done in Jersey, but not so in other places.
In Nevada, where legalized gaming got its start, you might see mostly red $5 chips and green quarters, but there is no specific law requiring a certain color be used. Thirty years ago you could find $1 chips that were white, yellow, gray, blue, brown and even black. A few years before that, the casinos used Eisenhower dollars, and before that, the casinos used real silver dollars. Imagine that!
As for larger denominations, every club can choose their own color. Harrah's used white chips until the late 1980's. Today, their $1 chips are white, and that's more the norm now, partly because casinos are more corporate (with several corporations owning many casinos), and partly for safety.
The Flags and Cranberries nicknames are specific to Bellagio because of the colors. Other casinos use different colors for their higher-denomination chips. For instance, the $5,000 chips at Caesar’s are dark brown and are called “Chocolates”. Other casinos use various flavors of Gray for their $5k chips.
Some casinos color-code their table game signs to match the denomination of chip for the minimum bet for that table. That way, all you have to do is look at the color of the sign. The colors of the chips used in the majority of casinos are the same. The denominations of the colors are:
- White or Blue chips are one dollar.
- Red chips are five dollars and are called nickels.
- Green chips are twenty-five dollars and are called quarters.
- Black chips are one hundred dollars.
- Purple Chips are five hundred dollars and are called Barneys.
- Orange chips are one thousand dollars and are called pumpkins.
Why Problems Arose
In the late '90's, a casino in Las Vegas issued one dollar chips that were black in color. This created quite a stir amongst the other casinos who have $100 chips that are black. There were concerns that scam artists would mix some of these in with the legitimate chips. The outcry was substantial and the casino rethought their chip-color choice.
The reason casinos use different color chips is to make it easy for the dealers, Pit Bosses, and surveillance workers to determine how much a player is betting. It also makes it fun for people who collect casino chips!
By matching the color of the chips with the table signs it makes it easy to tell the minimum bet for a table with just a quick glance. A red sign would denote a five-dollar table and a green sign would tell you that the minimum bet is twenty-five dollars. This makes it convenient for the players. There are some tables that have minimums that don't correspond to chip colors such as $10 and $15 games. All you have to do is note which color sign the casino you are visiting uses. Then remember it for the next time. The casinos in Connecticut use yellow for ten-dollar tables and orange for fifteen-dollar tables.
Some casinos may have the same color sign for all table minimums. If this is the case you will need to read them before sitting down. But for most of them, all you will need to do is look for the color of your choice, have a seat and place your bet.
Roulette Chips
As for the roulette table, you can use the same chips used on other tables, but if you are going to be playing mostly the inside numbers, the dealer will offer you a color. That means you'll get your own chips, with their own denomination. The standard value is $1, but you can have whatever value you want, you just can't cash them in anywhere but at that table - as soon as you are done playing!
The reason each player gets their own color is to distinguish who gets what on each winning number selected by the players. If you play roulette, you know that's necessary!
Everyone knows about the most famous live casino game, poker.
That game has been around for centuries and it’s really old.
The main element of the poker game is the poker chips.
Everyone is familiar with the famous colorful poker chips, and maybe that’s how the game alone became famous.
There are various chips and all of you that aren’t familiar with them are probably thinking:
‘Do they really have a special meaning or is that color just for fun and diversity?’.
Well, the answer is, they really do have a meaning and even different value.
In this article, today, I will explain the values and colors of every color of the poker’s chips and how did they get the meaning they have today.
Poker Chips’ Materials, Colors, and Their Meaning
The poker chips, as I mentioned before as well, have all kinds of colors and plus, they are made of various materials as well.
The oldest casino poker chips have been made of pure clay, and it dates all the way to the 1800s years.
Through time, the poker chips’ materials have been changing and transforming all the time.
And right now, you can find poker chips made from materials such as plastic, ceramic, clay, and even from mutated material.
It’s usually mixed with plastic and clay or porcelain and clay.
The plastic ones are the cheapest, and there is also a metallic option.
But the clay ones, being the oldest, are also the most expensive out of all the chips’ materials.
As much as there are materials, there are also lots of colors representing the poker chips.
They are meant to represent a certain amount of money.
- White, $1
- Red, $5
- Blue, $10
- Gray, $20
- Green, $25
- Orange, $50
- Black, $100
- Pink, $250
- Purple, $500
- Yellow, $1000 (sometimes burgundy or gray)
- Light Blue, $2000
- Brown, $5000
As you can see, there are many poker chips and their color can be really confusing and seem like too much at first.
But as time passes, with the help of poker experience, you will learn them by heart.
Summary
Tip for newbies: Some of the casinos in the world allow people to stack $100 bills as cash instead of poker chips.
The chip management is really important when it comes to playing poker because after all, you play with real money.
One of the most important things to remember though is that once you place them.
Whether it’s in front of you on the poker table, you mustn’t touch them.
Nor replace them, at all costs.
In the live casino world, this is considered as cheating and you definitely don’t want to be banned from the poker’s round that night, right?
Poker is a really fun game.
If you know how to play and master the poker chips.
Casino Chip Denominations And Color
Then you may be the next millionaire and the poker’s world champion.
Lukas is the head author at Casinoble and responsible for all content strategies and what casinos we review.
Poker Chip Color Meanings
Lukas has a background of playing poker in the early years of the poker boom in Europe. He became an expert within the online gambling and has been working as an author for several websites.