Special Chips Required for Roulette Players
Casinos around the world require players to place their bets with small plastic or metal chips instead of cold hard cash. They do this for many reasons, some reasonable and some quite calculated. For example, casinos find that players wager with much more bravado when they use chips than when they use cash. Chips are also used to make it easier for a dealer to see the amount of a wager, because they cannot be easily counterfeited or stolen, and because they are easier to count or weigh.
While different rules apply to chips – with some states regulating universal colors and values – all casinos are obliged to have a distinct and uniform set of “edge spots” on chips to make their values easily identifiable. Chips must also have the casino name and location along with the value somehow impressed or printed on the surface as well.
For Roulette however a casino’s standard chips are never used. A player cannot go to the cashier of a casino to purchase chips for the Roulette table, but must present themselves and their money to the dealer, or croupier, of the Roulette table itself. The player exchanges their cash for special Roulette chips, and each player is given a specific color, different from other players, to help the dealer distinguish all of the bets.
This means that every player has a different color, including friends or spouses who are all obliged to obtain their own chips from the dealer. This prevents arguments or disputes about chip theft (which is easy at the crowded area of any gaming table), and about wager amounts.
While all tables have a “minimum” or “maximum” wager, the chips will always be available in a variety of denominations. The player must let the dealer know which amounts they want to receive their chips in. For example, even if a table minimum is a ten dollar wager the player may still ask for one dollar chips.
Once the player has let the dealer know their choice, the dealer places the chip in the player’s color along the rail near the wheel, and lays a marker on top of the chip that displays the value for that particular chip during the Roulette session.
Since each player is given a specific color chip the values are never the same. For instance a player may receive the orange chips and ask for them to be worth five dollars each. The dealer will indicate that using the system of chips and markers explained above. When that player is through playing they slide their remaining chips to the dealer who will cash them out. The next player who uses the orange chip may ask for their chips at one dollar amounts, which means only the Roulette dealer can cash out any player’s chips correctly.