Custom Chips Part VI:the Endgame

Here's the final mock-ups of my ceramic chips before they went off to the printer.


And here (finally) are the actual chips!












And here are the mismatched edges, which is why they were so cheap.


Overall I'm pleased with my chips, for the price and my lack of design experience I think they came out fine. Things of learned, don't go very fine on the details,( the colors bled into the small denoms) and use a lot of contrast in color, (I'm sad about how the greens in the 25 chip look so similar).

Custom Chips Part V: Ceramics

After my first failed attempt to make a chip I start to reconsider the ceramic chip idea. While I still don't love the feel of ceramic chips, I do like the idea of being able to design the whole chip. This allows for more room for your art. I find other chip manufactures that can do ceramics for a lot cheaper. The clincher comes when Joe at Palm Imports offers 25 cent custom chips to Chiptalk.net members. Time to design a custom ceramic chip.

My "poker room" is in the basement which also holds the largest TV in the house, a very nice recliner, a kegerator with two taps for my home brew and another beer of choice, as well as most of my sports memorabilia. I finished basement was a requirement when my wife and I were house hunting so that I could have this "Man Cave"

Since I play poker in my "Man Cave" I decided to base my chips around this idea. I also wanted to include the fact that I home brew. Thus I decided on The Man Cave Poker Room and Brewery.
Here are some earlier attempts at my design.



I wasn't happy with the cave imagery, but liked the general idea of the chips. Zerbet from the Ante-Up forum came up with this idea for the center image.

I liked it a lot but felt it was missing something. I tried adding some beer images

And Zerbet tried too.


In the end I didn't like the look of the beer images, not "primitive" enough, so I decided to just stick with the suits of cards, but to add some color.


So this becomes the center art for my chips.

Up next, the final mock-ups and the actual chips!

Custom Chips Part IV Mock ups!

So I have my chip type picked out (ProGen 80's) now its time to start working on the label for real. I start making mock-ups of my label in the various color chips. After a little tweaking I get this design to send to the label maker for him to work on.



He quickly comes back with this some improvements, but I don't like the black background on the sign.


And then I lose contact with the dealer. He never sends me another mock-up. I don't pursue it because after working on these chips for as long as I have I'm regretting my design. I mean how original is the Las Vegas sign? Bleah. I want my custom chips to be my truly unique chips.

So, back to the drawing board.

Next: new chip design, and a new chip type.

Foxwoods: the blandness of it all.

Well, I made out to Foxwoods awhile back. Unfortunately my good week of Poker came to an end there. I just did a quick day trip. I made it there for the 11:00 AM $80+20daily tournament. I didn't even make it to the first break. I don't feel I played poorly. Just didn't get the cards. I got knocked out when I read my opponent as having nothing when the river came, I raised his half pot bet All-in (about 3 times his raise, and most of his remaining chips). After thinking long and hard he calls the bet with Ace high! So my read was correct, but I only had ace high as well and a weaker kicker and got knocked out. If I had known my opponents cards I would have made the same play, so I'm OK with how I got knocked out.

After the daily tournament, I played two $100+20 SnG's. In both of these I just never got cards, and with how rapidly the blinds go up you need to get chips quickly or the blinds become too large relative to your stack. I got knocked out 6th and 7th as I was forced to make plays while I still had some fold equity in my stack.

Some general thoughts. Wednesday afternoons at Foxwoods is not a great time to find weak games. Almost every player at my tables were regulars, not tourists or vacationers. A much harder field than a weekend night.
The new MGM Grand/Foxwoods $1 chip was out when I played, I missed the other new chip releases by one day! They are nice looking chips.

Cheaper options? (Custom Chips Pt. III)

So looking for cheaper chips to use I come across "China clays". Basically all clay chips manufactured in China, not as good of quality as Paulson, ASM or BCC clay chips (which are casino quality), but better than a composite chip with a metal slug inside it to give it weight.

ProGen 80's or Wallson (same chip just goes by 2 names) chips seemed ideal for creating custom chips for cheap. They are all clay and color and spotwise look VERY similar to Paulson Pharaohs or James Bond's.
Progen 80's
Paulson Pharaoh's

Paulson James Bond Casino de Isthmus

Now the Progen's don't feel or sound as good as the Paulson's and the colors aren't as bright (especially the red chip) but they cost about 1/4 a Paulson chip does, and they have a recessed center to take your own labels for easy customization.

So I now need to find a label making company. I don't want to print the labels myself, as I want high quality vinyl label that will last a long time and look very good.

There are a few companies/people who do this so I go with a regular contributor from Chiptalk.net. We work out a very nice price for both the chips and labels and I continue my designing of the chip label.

After a bit of effort with Powerpoint and Paint I get this as my next version of my label. I'll make a slightly different front and back design to the chip.

Still not a final design but starting to look better.

Next Mock-ups!

A good week of Poker

While telling my chip quest story, I still have been playing some poker. Both the home game I wrote about earlier and a bit on line. After several weeks of poor play and -ROI, I kicked some a$$ this week.

On-line I decided to "get rid" of the few remaining dollars I had at Bodog. I played a 10+1 MTT NLHE for just under half the money I had left on the site. I get second and take down $480. Sweet. Try again the next day bust out right after the first break. Try again the next day 4th and $210. Very nice! I put in a withdraw request (leaving $100 behind to play with.) Let's see how long this takes. (Bodog says expect 25 business days BLEAH!)

I've been a loser at the home game the last two sessions. But yesterday I was the big winner, more than making up for my previous losses!

A very nice week of Poker.

Lets hope it continues as I go to Foxwoods next week.

Chip types (Custom Set the Journey Pt. II)

So while I play with my insert/label for my custom set I need to decide what type of chip I want to use for my chip set. I order a lot of sample sets to get a feel for the different types of chips out there.

The first set of samples I ever ordered were from Home Poker Chips. They make custom casino quality ceramic chips. The advantage of ceramic chips is you can use the entire chip for your artwork/design. However to me ceramics sound very plasticy and don't have the nice feel of high quality clay chips. Also the colors of this set seemed washed out and didn't POP. As I do more research I discover that this is due to the finish on the chip. It has a rough texture which helps in stacking but blurs/fades the image a bit.



The other casino quality choice for chips is Paulson. They make the majority of clay casino chips. They are the top of the line for chips. However you cannot get custom chips made. (Only casino's can do this.) But they do sell premade chips for the home market. I order 2 sample sets of Paulson's home chips. James Bond and Pharaoh's Club
I love the feel and sound of the Paulson chip, but they aren't customizable.


For custom clays ASM is considered the top of the line. You get to customize the inlay as well as the edgespots and all the coloring of the chip itself. And you can choose from several molds. Pokerchips.com is ASM's website.
I love these chips and the full customization is awesome.


BUT all three of these options will run me over a dollar a chip. The fact that I still don't host a regular home game despite all my efforts to do so, means I can't justify paying close to $1,000 for a set of chips that won't get used. Time to look for some cheaper options.