[Leonard]

After lurking for a while I am going to put my two cent in re the blue vs white debate.

First a disclaimer: I am not sure if I am going to buy this set or not. However, the blue vs white controversy is not a deciding factor. I think I would prefer personalized chips and I am waiting to handle some samples of the pokerchip.com custom chips. If they feel good enough to me I will probably go custom. If not, probably Paulson Egyptians.

Secondly, I understand that this is not a democracy and that Ten has to have final say over the chip design. I have final say over whether or not I buy any.

I favor blue. The primary reason is that the Mirage, where I have played almost all of my casino poker uses blue one-dollar chips. I believe Ten is from the east coast and $1 chips are white in Atlantic City. I think that for nealy all of us, this is the primary reason we prefer one or the other. (In the JB Paulson set the blue chip is $1. However, the insert is ugly, so who cares?)

The only reason to buy expensive chips is to get the look/feel of a casino chip. The ultra cheap chips from the toy dept of WalMart function exactly the same as high-dollar chips. For this reason, I don’t like the idea of non-denom chips that are supposed to look like they came from a casino. The design even says “Pharaoh’s Club & Casino” on it. I also think the chips should be consistent from one to another. For this reason, even though I prefer the blue $1 chip, I would buy a white $1 chip over a blue non-denom.

Also for this reason, if it were my choice, I would either leave it at white-$1/blue-.25 with NO non-denoms (and save a few bucks in art costs) or offer white in both denoms and blue in both denoms. For these chips with the Pharaoh’s logo, non denom’s don’t do much for me personally.

Arguments about how dirty white chips get make little sense to me in the setting of a home game, especially given that chips are mostly sorted and stacked with chips of the same color.


There you have it – my decision in a nutshell. I would clearly decide differently than Ten has on this issue, but, regardless, this is the most spectacular clay chip design that I have ever seen.

PS I just saw the new blue chip – it looks great. Much better than the turkey.


Leonard