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Clay poker chips have a history that parallels the development of the game of poker itself. They were conceived sometime in the late 19th century, perhaps the late 1870s or 80s, as replacements for the haphazard methods of keeping track of players’ winnings in mid-western bars and on the old steamboats. Until then, players used anything valuable that came to hand, be it random coins, gold flakes or whatever else they had with them. Poker chips as a concept finally began to standardize betting in the game, and clay chips entered the field along with various other types.

Some of the early chips were made of bone, wood or even ivory, but clay chips soon began to dominate the game. They were created with metal molds in which the clay was placed and put under high pressure, to take on the desired shape. However, users discovered early on that chips made entirely of clay tended to be brittle and could break easily. So eventually the manufacturers added ceramic materials to the clay, to make the mixture stronger and more durable. Since that time, all poker chip sets have really been made of this clay-ceramic composite.

The development of clay poker chips didn’t stop once their basic formula had been established. Since they’d been introduced in the first place to reduce inconsistency and possible cheating, casinos went a step further and individualized these chips to correspond to whatever casino they came from. Proprietary clay formulas were created and patented by casinos, and they added special indicators on the chips themselves, so that any particular type could only be used and cashed at the establishment for which it was created.

In recent years, the development of poker chips has taken another leap that threatens to leave older clay poker chips behind. New technologies have now created chips that can be tracked more accurately than the former method of just using a casino’s characteristic designs on their own chips. Now you find some of the newer casino poker chips implanted with tracking devices like radio frequency ID tags, for example. Even the materials have started changing, the mixture of clay and ceramics replaced by metal with a hard resin overlay. With the introduction of these new technologies and materials, it’s possible that the long, fascinating history of the clay chip is coming to an end.

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Filed under: Hobbies on November 19th, 2009