Palms chips

I played at the Palms last night. I hadn't been there since August 1, and since then they've purchased a new batch of poker chips. A sample of the old (2005) and new (2008) $1 is shown above, though it's the same with the $5 chips. You can click the image for a huge close-up view, if you'd like.

What may not be apparent at a glance is that these chips are physically quite different. The old ones have a completely smooth surface; the new ones are textured and embossed. The new ones are about 1 millimeter smaller in diameter than the old ones, and a tad thicker, too. The two chip types are made of different kinds of composite--probably from different manufacturers.

No, this isn't the greatest problem I've ever run into in a poker room, but the simultaneous use of both kinds (they didn't retire the old ones, just supplemented the supply) does cause some nuisance issues.

First, the chips don't stack nicely because of the different diameters. Imagine trying to make a neat stack of coins, half of which are quarters and half of which are nickels. It would be nearly impossible. Yeah, yeah, I'm a fussbudget about some stupid things, to be sure, but what's wrong with liking to be able to make tidy, orderly stacks of chips?

Second, for those who like to shuffle and otherwise play with their chips, everything becomes harder because of the differences in size and surface texture. This one doesn't affect me, because once my chips are lined up perfectly, I'm done handling them until it's time to put them into action.

Third, the difference in thickness is enough that it causes a problem in counting. This isn't nearly as bad as the worst discrepancy in town, which is at the Golden Nugget. There, the $5 are much, much older and more worn down than the $1 chips, as well as being from a different manufacturer, so that 21 fit in each slot in a standard chip rack. Chip racks are one of the few things that are, as far as I know, absolutely univeral and interchangeable among all casinos, and they are all designed to hold five columns of 20 chips each--except at the Golden Nugget, where if you fill the racks in the usual way with the red chips, you'll unexpectedly be looking at five stacks of 21 each; fill the same rack with their blue chips and you've got the standard 5 x 20. I don't know how they stand it, but they get by somehow. My guess is that their chip-for-cash exchange error rate is higher than elsewhere.

Anyway, the problem the Palms has now introduced isn't that drastic, but it's noticeable. I didn't get a chance to play around with a rack, but it looked to me that the thickness difference was enough that 19 of the new ones would be just about equal to a stack of 20 of the old ones. That's just asking for trouble.

Finally, there's just the appearance. I don't insist on completely uniformity in everything; in fact, I enjoy having a variety of chips of the same basic color but with different imprints. But the new ones are so different that it's kind of jarring to the eye. Different prints on chips of the same base color and design and composition, when spread out on the green felt, might be compared to a field of wildflowers of different colors. The new ones thrown in, however, is kind of like seeing a bunch of mushrooms sprouting up among those flowers. Not that there's anything wrong with mushrooms, but they don't complement flowers well. As a small additional practical problem, when I was trying to eyeball the pot during a hand of poker, I found that the strange, unexpected difference slowed me down; my brain is used to seeing two basic kinds of chips, and here there were four. Maybe that's just me, though.

I don't have any preference for one style or the other. But I can't figure out why they placed the recent order from a different manufacturer, so that they're stuck with this awkward mixture of two not completely compatible styles. Maybe the new ones undercut the old in price, but aesthetics and practicality are worth something, too, a fact that seems to have been neglected in the calculation.