Bills on the table

[M.B.E.]

In Las Vegas and L.A. cardrooms, hundred-dollar bills on the table are considered in play and may be placed in the pot instead of chips. Also it's pretty common to be asked to sell chips to another player for various reasons.

Are counterfeit bills a legitimate concern in this context? Or am I just being paranoid?

From time to time you hear about the vulnerability of U.S. money to counterfeiting (e.g. http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20020815counterfeit7.asp).

[JTG51]

I got a counterfeit bill from the chip window when I cashed out at Foxwoods once. I didn't know it was fake until I tried to deposit it at my bank. /forums/images/icons/frown.gif

So, I guess my point is you aren't being paranoid, and you should be careful not only with money on the table but also from the chip windows.

[Ed Miller]

The thing I always wondered about is counterfeit chips. How hard would it be to counterfeit those things? And it's not like people take a close look at them when you bring them to the cage in racks.

[Ed Miller]

Please ignore..

[M.B.E.]

Apparently a casino in Vancouver got scammed a few years ago with counterfeits of its $1000 chips. I guess they noticed one day that they had a lot more of those chips on hand than had ever been issued.

As a casino customer I'm not too worried about counterfeit chips. If I've been playing poker and it turns out one (or more) of my chips is a counterfeit, what are they going to do, refuse to accept it? That would be tantamount to accusing me of having done the counterfeiting myself. On the other hand, if I receive a counterfeit bill from another player (or the cage, for that matter), there's basically no recourse.

[Ed Miller]

Interesting... I'll try to look up about chip counterfeiting... always seemed like it would be too easy and undetectable (though obviously there's more to it or people would be doing it all the time).

Another thing I've always wondered about is... now that there are all these machines that accept $100 bills for various things (in Canada, do machines accept $1000 bills at casinos?)... it seems like casinos would be quite vulnerable to someone who could counterfeit bills just well enough to trick the machine. I think it would probably be quite difficult indeed to catch such a person.

[Ed Miller]

Found someone's discussion on counterfeiting chips at http://www.thewizardofodds.com/game/askthewizard7.html. I suppose counterfeiting is just more trouble than it's worth for crooks, who are generally probably just looking for easy money in the first place.

Q: Why don't you hear about people trying to counterfeit casino chips? It seems to be way easier than trying to print US money. - Bob Pierce of ?

A: I had to defer to Gus FanFassian of the Game Salon for this question. Here is what Gus says,

"The reason you don't hear more about people counterfeiting poker chips is because of the cost and the intricate methods that are required to produce the chips. There are very few poker chip manufacturers. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the machinery and different commodities neccessary to make poker chips. It costs, on average, $10,000 to $20,000 just to have your own mold manufactured, let alone counterfeiting casino chips.

The other factor, is the formula used in making the chip. Just pouring clay into a mold doesn't cut it. If you don't have the correct amount of ingredients, your going to have a piece of clay that might resemble something close to a poker chip, if it doesn't fall apart first. Making poker chips might sound easy, but in truth, it isn't.

Besides, the casinos are very alert to counterfeit chips and can spot them almost immediately. I heard of a case in Canada, where some counterfeit chips were being circulated at a casino. They were spotted right away. The casino immeditately removed the chips from ALL THE TABLES, and replaced them with back ups, of different color and marks. The guys passing the bad chips were caught and when their car was searched, some $80,000 (Canadian) worth of bad chips was found in the trunk. The quality wasn't that good, to begin with. It's just to costly and to demanding to counterfeit chips...that's the bottom line."

[M.B.E.]

I wonder if the reference to the Canadian chip-counterfeiting job was the same one that I had heard about.

Even though manufacturing the chips to get sufficient quality would be difficult, it might be easier to paint and re-label small-denomination chips to resemble a bigger denomination.

In any event, the risk of getting caught passing counterfeit chips would be very high compared to passing counterfeit bills. Casino surveillance will usually have an image of your face when you walk in the casino. Also, if they have video of the tables you're playing at, someone looking at the tape of a table where a counterfeit chip was discovered in the tray may be able to make an educated guess as to which customer the chip originated with. With a counterfeit bill that would be much less likely.

[M.B.E.]

I haven't seen any machines in Canada that accept $100 bills. We don't have $1000 bills any more; the government started withdrawing them from circulation a couple of years ago, over my protests. Essentially the government decided to make it extremely inconvenient for law-abiding citizens to use cash for large transactions, under the guise of combatting money-laundering.

I still intend to lobby the government to introduce a $500 bill, with Pierre Elliott Trudeau on its face.

[Rick Nebiolo]

I sell chips whenever asked and keep the bills in plain site on top my rack. Then a little later I have the chip runner convert the bills back to chips. Obviously, this protects me and helps prevent a weak opponent from getting frustrated waiting for chips and leaving.

BTW, you should never buy chips from a weak player who happens to have many chips in front of him. It is a lot easier for him to walk away from the table with bills than chips.

Regards,

Rick