A Brief History Of Poker Chips

“The man who invented gambling was a smart man, but the man who invented poker chips was a genius!” Have you ever heard that saying at a poker table? You may brush this off and not think about it much when you hear it, but the next time you push in a big pile of chips that have a lot of value associated with them, think about it again.

The history of poker chips is a cloudy one. There is no one defined moment where the first poker chip was created. Beginning in the 1800’s, “chips” of varying substances and shapes started showing up at card games and gambling halls. These chips were made from bone, wood, ivory, and eventually were made of a composite of clay materials.

From the late 1800’s and into the early 1900’s, clay poker chips become the norm. Just a handful of companies in the USA emerged to become the source of these chips. The name that most people associate with clay poker chips is Paulson. Paulson continues to make chips and is the current market leader for casino poker chips, supplying casinos worldwide. There are currently several other clay poker chip manufacturers, including companies outside the USA.

In the late 1900’s a new ceramic poker chip was introduced to the market. The benefits of these chips is that they provided full customization. The entire face on both sides of the chips can be customized with full color images. Also, the edges can be customized with regular stripes, diagonal stripes, text, or anything else you can think up. Ceramic poker chips are currently used in dozens of casinos worldwide.

Back to the old saying about the inventor of the poker chip. How is that guy a “genius”? When gambling, if someone can push a pile of chips into a pot or towards a dealer it does not have the same “feeling” as pushing a stack of cash. Since the chips themselves are worth close to nothing relative to the value they represent, it can be easy to push around piles of poker chips without really thinking about what they are truly worth.

Sean Pratch is a accomplished poker player and designer of custom ceramic poker chips. Sean has helped with the design of dozens of chips for games held throughout the world. View an image exhibit of custom poker chips

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.