Pokerspecs are a new design of sunglasses, invented by Graham Hiew, and made especially for poker players. They débuted at the World Poker Series in July 2005. Pokerspecs work by tilting the lenses so that a poker player is able to see his cards, but not reveal his eyes to his opponents.

Links

• The Official Pokerspecs Website

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

In poker, a hole cam is a camera that displays a player’s hole cards (face-down cards) to television viewers. It was patented by Harry Orenstein in 1997.

The hole cam became popular when the Late Night Poker program first began using it in televised tournements. It picked up further popularity after the World Poker Tour began airing in 2003 on the Travel Channel.

In the card game Poker the buck or button is a marker used to indicate the player who is the dealer or, in casino games with a house dealer, the player who acts last on that deal (who would be the dealer in a home game).

When Poker became a popular saloon game in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century the integrity of the players was unreliable and the honor codes that had regulated gambling for centuries became inadequate. Because the dealer has the greatest opportunity to cheat (by manipulating the specific cards that players receive and by seeing the faces of the dealt cards) the players took turns in this role. To avoid arguments about whose turn it was to deal, the person who was next due to deal would be given a marker. A knife was a common object used as such a marker, and the marker became generally known as a buck as an abbreviated reference to the buck’s horn that formed the handle of many knives at that time.

When the dealer had finished dealing the cards he ‘passes the buck’. According to Martin, the earliest use of the phrase in print is in the July 1865 edition of Weekly New Mexican: “They draw at the commissary, and at poker after they have passed the buck.”. The phrase then appears frequently in many sources so it probably originated at about this time.

The use of other small disks as such markers led to the alternative term “button”. Silver dollars were later used as markers and it has been suggested that this is the origin of “buck” as a slang term for “dollar,” though by no means is there universal agreement on this subject.

US president Harry S. Truman’s use of the slogan “the buck stops here” in speeches, and on a sign on his desk, derives from the adoption of the phrase “passing the buck” as a metaphor for avoiding responsibility.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

One dollar chips from various Las Vegas casinos.

Casino poker chips are special tokens representing a fixed amount of money. Especially in cardrooms and casinos, poker chips are also known as checks.

Construction and design

Poker chips are fabricated with complicated graphics and edge spot patterns intending to make them difficult to counterfeit. The process used to make these chips is a trade secret and expensive – typically done on high pressure compression molding machines.

The typical material of construction is not clay as is sometimes believed, but a ceramic material with clay added for texture and weight. The breakable, clay chips of the 1960s and 1970s are no longer manufactured. The clay composition of modern chips varies by manufacturer, and is typically very slight (1-10%).

The chips used in American Casinos generally weigh between 9.5 grams and 10 grams each. The chips sold for home use vary much more, depending on manufacturer and construction.

Common designs for home use depict the six faces of a dice or the suit symbols around the edge of the chip. They are typically manufactured with injection molding technology using ABS plastic. Some chips are molded around a small metal disc, called a slug, for weight.

Cigar Aficionado article on Collecting Chips includes more on their manufacture;[1]

A set of injection molded ABS poker chips “hot-stamped” with denominations 100, 50, 25 & 10

Colors

The most common colors used at United States casinos to differentiate between chip denominations are:

• White or blue, $1
• Pink, $2.50
• Red, $5
• Blue, $10
• Green, $25
• Black, $100
• Purple, $500

$2.50 chips are almost exclusively used for blackjack tables, since a natural typically pays 3:2 and most wagers are in increments of $5. However, the Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey has used pink chips in $7.50-$15 and $10-$20 poker games. Low-denomination yellow chips can vary in value: $20 by statute in Atlantic City and Illinois (which, oddly, also uses “mustard yellow” $0.50 chips [2]); $5 at most Southern California poker rooms; $2 at Foxwoods’ poker room in Ledyard, Connecticut and at Casino del Sol in Tucson, Arizona; and $0.50 at Potawatomi Casino in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Blue chips are occasionally used for $10, most notably by statute in Atlantic City. In Las Vegas and California, most casinos use blue or gray for $1 chips.

Chips are commonly available in $1000 denominations, depending on the wagering limits of the casino in question. Such chips are often yellow or orange and of a large size. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and other areas which permit high wagers typically have chips available in $5000, $10000, $25000, and higher denominations; the colors for these vary wildly.

European casinos use a similar scheme, though certain venues (such as Aviation Club de France) use pink for €2 and blue for €10. European casinos also use plaques rather than chips for high denominations (usually in the €1000 and higher range).

Casino-style chips can be bought for home games, but the price is approximately $1 per chip.

Generic poker chip sets can be bought at a much lower price, less than $0.20 per chip. These simulate the weight and feel of casino chips, but are of a very inferior quality.

A standard 300 piece set of ABS plastic chips

Security

Each casino has a unique set of chips, even if the casino is part of a larger company. This distinguishes a casino’s chips from others, since each chip and token on the gaming floor has to be backed up with the appropriate amount of cash. In addition, with the exception of Nevada, casinos are not permitted to honor another casino’s chips.

The security features of casino chips are numerous. Artwork is of a very high resolution or of photographic quality. Custom color combinations on the chip edge (edge spots) are usually distinctive to a particular casino. Certain chips incorporate RFID technology, such as those at the new Wynn Casino in Las Vegas.

Counterfeit chips are rare. High levels of surveillance, along with staff familiarity with chip design and coloring, make passing fake chips difficult. Casinos, though, are prepared for this situation. According to wizardofodds.com, on one such occasion, the casino removed all chips from the gaming floor and replaced them with new sets with alternative markings, which resulted in the arrest of the attempted counterfeiters.

Casino chips used in tournaments are usually much cheaper and much simpler in design. Because the chips have no cash value, usually chips are designed with a single color (usually differing in shade or tone from the version on the casino floor), a smaller diameter, and a basic mark on the interior to distinguish denominations; however, at certain events (such as the World Series of Poker or other televised poker), chips approach quality levels of chips on the floor.

Authentic clay chip manufactured by Blue Chip Co for home use

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Poker Chip Trick Tutorial DVD Trailer

The following is a list of standard equipment needed for a game of poker:

• Cards: Standard Anglo-American playing cards are used. In home games it is common to have two decks with distinct backs, and to shuffle the unused deck while each hand is in progress. Casinos typically change decks after 15 minutes of use, because the quality of the cards declines with each shuffling. For friendly home environments, this is not an issue, but some dealers can perform intentionally corrupt shuffles even with a lightly-worn deck. Poker players are advised to have at least one “back-up” deck on hand to replace decks with worn, soiled, or bent cards. High-quality plastic-coated cards can be purchased for approximately $3.00, and last much longer than paper cards.

In some poker games, particularly stud poker it is not unusual for cards to become bent quickly, as players often read their “hole” cards by peeking at the corner rather than lifting the card. Card quality can be preserved for longer if players agree not to bend cards, and proper shuffling techniques are used.

Rarely, multiple decks are used in poker; however, this noticeably alters the game. Using additional decks will make certain hand configurations significantly more common than they are in single-deck poker.

• Poker Chips: Currency is difficult to stack or handle, so most poker games are played with chips, or coin-shaped tokens of uniform size and weight, usually 39mm wide and anywhere from 5 to 16 grams in weight, whose money value is determined by their color. Traditionally, poker chips were made of bone; however, modern casino chips are often made of clay. Clay chips (which can cost as much $1.70 per chip, or $850 for a set of 500) are considered the most upscale variety of poker chip. Another high-end variety of chips are ceramic chips, ceramic chips that can be customized easily cost around $1 per chip. Plastic chips are also available, at a wide variety of quality levels.

The standard color scheme for poker chips is as follows: $1 chips are white; $5, red; $10, blue; $25, green; $100, black; $500, purple; $1000, orange; $5000, gray; $10000, pink. There is no requirement that casinos use these colors, and there is much variance regarding the colors used for denominations above $100.

• Poker Table: A typical poker game will have between two and ten players. For the sake of convenience, each player should be able to reach the central pot, so circular or oblong tables are best. A soft table top is preferred to facilitate picking up chips and cards.

• Lammers: Lammers are plastic, chip-shaped tokens with text written on them. Most commonly used is a “dealer button” with either the word “DEALER” or a “D” written on it; this item (also known as the buck) indicates who shall deal next. In a casino setting, lammers are also used to indicate which variant is being used, and whose turn it is to pay the blind.

• Cut card: This is a thick plastic card, the same size and shape of a playing card. The dealer will place the deck upon this card before dealing, in order to prevent the accidental exposure of the bottom card of the deck. While rarely used in home games, the cut card is universal in casino play.

• Timer: If playing a poker tournament, a timer is used to count down periods in which the blinds are at certain levels. When the timer reaches 0:00, the blinds go up, and if chips are no longer useful (say, the blinds have gone up to $25 and $50, so $5 chips aren’t needed any more), the unneeded chips are converted to higher valued ones.

• Card protectors:: In games where all of a player’s cards are facedown, some players use items like specialty chips or glass figures to place on top of their cards to protect them from being accidentally discarded.

Purchasing poker equipment

For most home games, high-quality plastic poker chips, still cheaper than clay chips, will suffice, though casinos generally prefer clay, considered the most authentic type of chip. Tables should have a soft surface; hard-surfaced “poker tables” are generally no more convenient than a standard dining table with a poker cloth. Card decks of reasonable quality can be purchased for about $3 a piece, and it’s best to have at least three of them on hand.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Poker Equipment