How to Choose the Best Poker Chips in 2024

Everyone who loves playing poker knows how important good poker chips are. This fun activity is great if you want to spend some quality time with your friends and even earn some extra money.

If you own a casino or if you are in charge of buying the things needed for it, you are probably aware that the right type of chips will add that luxurious touch to the place and will make people feel like they are in one of the Vegas’ casinos.

Finding the best poker chips is not an easy task, especially if you are a beginner in casino games. We are going to help you with it and we are going to help you learn how to recognize which chips are good and which are most likely to get damaged in no time.

Types of Poker Chips

These are the most common types.

Plastic Chips

There are 2 under types of common plastic chips. The cheapest ones are usually in a set found in a round carrier. Of you are playing poker at home, they will do the job and can be purchased in any major chain store.

The second type is Diamond chips, that are standard casino size and are a bit heavier than the first type. Diamond chips have solid color and are great for friendly poker games.

Composite Chips

Most common chips used in home games. These chips usually weight 11.5 grams due to the metal insert. The most common complaint about these chips is that they are slippery, but they work fine for small stakes games where the risk of running out of chips is minimal.

If you play games at your home, but you are a serious player, you can get customized composite chips and these types are definitely the most popular ones that get ordered online.

There are a thousand different designs and you can even get ones that are hot stamped, have engravings or label stickers on the chips. There are variations where there is no metal insert in the chip and they weight less than the usual weight of 11.5 grams.

Ceramic Chips

These chips are mostly used in casinos and have a smooth porcelain feel. They can be designed with detail that a person cannot reproduce on other types of chips.

Ceramic chips are really durable and they will stand the test of time. The only downside is that they have a higher cost, so most people who play friendly games at home don’t buy these chips.

Clay Chips

The most expensive and best quality chips. They are used in casinos and you can rarely see them in someone’s home.

Clay chips are made using a compression molding process where unique designs can be molded right into the chip. These are the easiest chips to stack, handle and do chip tricks with.

Contrary to the popular belief, the heaviest chips are not the best quality ones. The clay casino chips usually weight 8 to 9 grams.

Weight

If you don’t want to just buy clay chips, the weight of the chips is one of the most important factors when choosing the best chips.

Heavier chips are more durable and lightweight ones are usually cheaper. If you want to buy something that will stand the test of time and won’t need replacing, it’s better to opt for heavier ones.

GamblersDailyDigest advices that players prefer heavier chips because they are easier to riffle and maneuver.

Common Poker Chip Weights:

• 7.5 grams
• 8.5 grams
• 9.0 grams
• 11.5 grams
• 13.0 grams
• 13.5 grams
• 14 grams

Design

There are a lot of different design options and here are the most popular ones.

Standard Design

Most of the manufacturers offer a lot of designs that can be printed on the chip. You can either buy a pre-designed one or pay a bit more to get a customized chip.

Stickers

You can get stickers in almost any poker design place and put them on your chips. You can even buy blank stickers and customize them on your computer.

The stickers are a great way to hide some flaws or damages on the chip. If you buy stickers to mark your chips, make sure to stick to the common color denominations rather than one chip color with different labels to protect yourself from people trying to scam you out of money.

Gold or Silver Foil Stamping

Most of the poker chips can be hot stamped with silver or gold lettering. The most common thing people put are initials or dollar denominations.

You should be aware that the foil stamping, sometimes flakes off the chip with wear, especially if the manufacturing is low quality.

Engraved Poker Chips

Anything you want to have engraved it is possible with the right manufacturer. If you choose engraving you will protect yourself from someone trying to sneak chips into your game or if they try to counterfeit your chips.

If you want to have both sides engraved, you will have to pay double and the best way to make counterfeiting difficult is to scan your signature and to have it engraved on the chips.

Quantity

Poker Chips can usually be purchased in sets or per chip. The sets from 100 to 1000 chips are common. No matter if you are buying a set or individual chips, you definitely need an idea of how many chips to buy.

The first thing you need to cover is that you need enough chips to cover the number of players. In case you are running tournaments, you want to get what is equivalent to one chip stack per player up to the maximum players permitted. Plus, you’d need a few extra replacement stacks.

When you make the calculations of how many chips to order for a live poker game, you need to overestimate a bit. You can never be sure if your game will escalate to higher stakes, so to avoid the risk of running out of chips, it’s better to overestimate the number of poker chips you will need for your game.

On the average, you will need 100 chips at the minimum per player. Remember that the majority of your poker chips comprised of the two lowest denominations.

Purchase at least 20 high denomination chips to make sure you don’t run out of them during a high-stakes poker game.

Now you know more about poker chips and how you can choose the best ones. Is there a type of chip you personally prefer?