Chip Inventory (Charity Event)

This is the first year that I will be able to be directly involved in my church's summer picnic. While I am not the "booth captain," I will be there both nights, 6pm to midnight, and will be there to oversee operations in the gaming area. I will be concentrating on Blackjack, but will likely assist in Beat the Dealer (dice game) and Showdown Poker.

Apparently, our parish spent a chunk of money on stamped poker chips. They seem to be decent quality 14 gram chips, with a gold "stamp" on both sides with our logo and denomination. From what I understand, they used them once a few years back, but no more than that.

I took it upon myself to count and inventory what chips we had, and now I have about a month and a half to figure out the logistics of using them during a 2-night, large attendance event.

I could use your help! Here are a couple of questions I could use answers to:

• How many chips should I supply per table, and of what denominations?
• How many chips should I have at the bank, for people to purchase/cash in?
• Do I have enough chips already?

The Blackjack area will have 8 tables, with minimum/maximum of $2/$20. I expect lots of $2 bettors.

Chip inventory & denominations:

Denomination	Count
50¢	600
$1	1200
$2	3000
$5	1200
$10	1000

It is currently unclear whether the Beat the Dealer or Showdown Poker tables will use cash or chips.

Any input or thoughts would be appreciated. Even information about what kind of chip inventory a $5 Blackjack table in Vegas would have would be helpful. Thank you.

I cant speak for Vegas, but in the UK my Casino's £2 min bj tables carry roughly

40 .50 chips
200 £1 chips
120 £5 chips
80 £25 chips
40 £100 chips

max when the float/bank is full.

I consider a working float for an experienced dealer on a busy low level table (willing to ask for .50 back, and to pay and take) for your needs to be roughly

40 .50 chips
60-100 $1 chips
160-180 $2 chips
40-60 $5 chips
40 -80 $10 chips

Should give you flexibility for the proposed hours. Might be an idea to keep the vast majority of your high denom chips at the bank for buy ins, which will then be transported to the tables by the player and can be recycled there for colour up.

I dont know how much help this is, but would be happy to discuss it further or answer any questions.

Obviously $2 chips are gonna be your workhorse chip. You only need $1s and 50-centers for blackjack payouts, so you don't need many of those.

How many rows are in each chip tray, and how many chips can you fit in each row? Can you fit sixty?

If I was setting up a 12-row tray for your purposes, I'd do this:

50c - 60 (x8=480)
$1 - 60 (x8=480)
$2 - 240 (x8=1920)
$5 - 120 (x8=960)
$10 - 100 (x8=800)

Layout:
$1 - $2 - $2 - --- - -- - $10 - ---- - --- - --- - --- - --- - 50c
$1 - $2 - $2 - $5 - $5 - $10 - $10 - $5 - $2 - $2 - $2 - 50c
$1 - $2 - $2 - $5 - $5 - $10 - $10 - $5 - $2 - $2 - $2 - 50c

Imprest level of the table would be $2170.

Leftover chips:
50c - 120
$1 - 720
$2 - 1080
$5 - 240
$10 - 200

First, thank you Croupier and Deucekies for the advice. Second...

Quote: Deucekies

How many rows are in each chip tray, and how many chips can you fit in each row? Can you fit sixty?

Ha! You assumed that we have blackjack tables with chip trays? Sadly, we do NOT. That brings up another question...

Given that our Blackjack tables are nothing more than a padded half-donut shaped overlay, which sits atop any random table, with no chip tray, nor place for a chip tray... What should we do?

• Use portable 100-chip racks? (Hey, it's better than nothing)
• Cobble together some other alternative? e.g. Build something, use cash boxes...
• Have a second person as the payout person, with an apron full of chips?
• Suck it up sunshine, and rent/buy actual tables? (Cost and time issues may prevent this)

The people that are in charge of any of the gaming areas at any of our events are not on the same level and most people here on WoV. We have a mindset of what a real Blackjack experience is. We want something that is as close to "real" as we can get.

As a matter of fact, our parish has been dinged by the Charitable Gaming Commission in the past. Fines and fees for not doing paperwork correctly, not following procedure... That's why I have had multiple threads asking for advice. We are on two strikes... a third strike means our license gets pulled.

This is why I am so inquisitive, and so appreciative of everyone's help here. WoV is my expert lifeline.

At my casino, on a $25 minimum table, we typically have an average of roughly 40 purple, 80 black, 160 green, 120 red, 50 pink($2.50), 50 white.

With your tables I think that would translate best to

Denomination	Count
50¢	50
$1	160
$2	160
$5	60
$10	120

You also need to decide what blackjack pays for amounts that aren't payable in those denominations. For example, $2.50 should be $3.75. You could give dealers rolls of quarters to pay blackjack but don't accept the quarters themselves in bets (to avoid the same problem, $2.25 pays $3.375)

Looks like your operation will be marginal on those two dollar chips.
If you sell them at the door... it may be some time before people bet with them at BJ and some additional time before they lose them, meanwhile your tables do need them in their chip tray and you do need something for chip trays for the table's bank. Plastic cookie lids might be the right size and shape but you need some sort of tray... and a lammer in front of each row of chips.

You might want to have a "reserve" chip supply.

Only allowing buy-ins at the table would let you stretch a limited amount of chips a little further, since you are likely to get many of the chips back shortly after they are bought.

You can get plastic chip trays online for pretty cheap.

Another thought I had in the back of my mind, which someone else suggested to me... would chip counterfeiting be easy?

This is the style of chip we have:


We have the basic colors, and NOT the tri-color as seen here:


Our chips are the basic colors: White, red, blue, green and yellow. The only distinguishing factor is a gold stamp on both sides.
It was suggested that someone could bring in blank chips of this style, betting with them, using one of our chips as the cap. The blank chips would be unseen mid-stack.

Is this something that we should worry about? Or would we only need to be on the lookout for people insisting on playing with large stacks of small denominations?

How big of an event will this be? You'd hope a church picnic wouldn't draw cheaters. The bigger the event and the more players who aren't from the church community the higher the chance that someone attempts to cheat, though.

Perhaps you could line up the chips in big stacks in a chip rack and draw a vertical line down the each of the white sections with a gold sharpie. That is hardly foolproof, but any additional deterrents can help. It's easy to replicate, but it gives some difference between your chips and a new store-bought chip when viewed in a stack.