Casino Chip of the Day

Thanks for the info -- saves me a trip to Palm Springs! I like visiting the place, but other than that potential (but now discredited) chip, I have no reason to go there any time soon.

I wouldn’t say bad news, it saves me a trip to Palm Springs lol.

Quote: PokerGrinder

Something like chips are meant to be made for use on tables and $8 chips have no reason to be played on a table.

Why the heck not? If I was at a casino when they were issuing $8 chips I would totally play with them.

Quote: TigerWu

Why the heck not? If I was at a casino when they were issuing $8 chips I would totally play with them.

I don’t make the rules, I just break them sometimes.

It’s been almost 6 months since I last collected a chip... this is very troubling to me lol.

There is at least a slim chance that I will add a new chip to the collection this weekend. I expect to spend a fair amount of time in a casino I visited in late 2016, but I have already posted a chip from there. I will be in proximity to a casino I have never visited and which has not yet been covered in this thread, so I am hoping to gather that souvenir. If that luck comes to pass, I'll probably post the chip late next week.

Which casino?

Quote: PokerGrinder

Which casino?

C'mon now. Why would you want me to spoil the surprise? I'll just say this much as hints: (1) The construction of this casino involved the destruction of another casino whose chip I posted in this thread some years ago. (2) The new casino went bankrupt before it even opened. (3) It is a Chinese-owned establishment. Is that not more than enough?

I don’t even have a guess lol

I had mentioned probably a year ago that Century Casinos bought the Isle of Capri in Cape Girardeau and Lady Luck in Caruthersville. Well I found out yesterday that they both have been fully rebranded and they have new Century chips in play.

When I saw this information the first thing I did was see how stupid it would be to add it to my drive to Vegas... very stupid! Saving for another trip lol

Golly, PG, if you drove/flew down there this weekend, you could collect two new chips and post them in this thread before the MoGH Chip Guide even knows they exist! Where's your spirit of adventure?

O.K., so I'll add these two Century chips to my list of chips to collect, probably on the same trip that I re-visit the Oaklawn in Hot Springs, AR (if it has changed names and issued new chips the way that Southland in West Memphis did) and the one or possibly/eventually two brand new casinos in that state. Still not sure of the changes there with implementation of the new legislation a year ago.

This past weekend, I did pick up that new chip I alluded to on the previous page. I got it cleaned up today, but I haven't done the photography yet. Soon.

Assume I rolled my eyes at you Doc...

Category: Caribbean Islands
City: Nassau (Cable Beach), New Providence Island, Bahamas
Casino: Baha Mar

As I likely have commented before, the Bahamas are not located in the Caribbean but rather in the Atlantic. Nevertheless, many folks think of them as Caribbean islands, and it might just add to the cumbersomeness if I were to create a separate geographic category in this thread for the Bahamas and other Atlantic islands in the general area.

Almost seven years ago, in April 2013, I posted my souvenir chip from the Crystal Palace Casino in Nassau/Cable Beach. You might find it interesting to re-read that post (or do so for the first time, if you never read it before). I had collected that souvenir on a visit to the island in 2006, and in my post I noted that the Baha Mar mega-resort was under construction by the time I got around to posting the chip. I said, “It is being financed by a bank owned by the Chinese government; being engineered/built by a company owned by the Chinese government, and the construction crew includes several thousand Chinese workers along side thousands of Bahamians.”

There were a few complications, as there often are. The ever-reliable Wikipedia reports that the development began in 2010 with an agreement between a local Bahamas-based investor (that they do not name) and the government, with groundbreaking in February 2011 and the resort projected to open in March 2015.

They go on to say, “By April 2016, construction was halted for nearly a year with the resort 97% complete following the original investor's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed in 2015 in a Delaware court (sidestepping Bahamas jurisdiction) but dismissed in September. A Bahamian judge subsequently put provisional liquidators in charge." Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises bought the facility in late 2016 from the China Exim Bank, which had financed the development. Baha Mar eventually opened in April 2017 with one hotel, with two more hotels in the complex opening in 2017 and 2018.

The Crystal Palace casino is permanently closed and may have been demolished (not sure). One comment I read on line (cannot verify this either) was that the hotel for the Crystal Palace was being used to house Baha Mar employees.

Edit: Found an article that says the Crystal Palace complex was imploded in the early hours of 10/01/2018.

Forum member Joeman posted a nice report of his 2018 visit to Baha Mar. I had read that report and took a few pointers from it before my wife and I made our visit there last weekend. (Thanks, Joe!) In 2019, 100xOdds responded to Joeman’s post and told of his own visit to Baha Mar. Check those out, if you like, and I won’t bother trying to say too much more about the casino or resort myself, since I would likely just repeat what is already posted in the forum.

So what were we doing in Nassau? Well, we drove to Miami, stopping off for two nights along the way to visit with a former neighbor, and then hopped a two-night cruise from Miami to Nassau and return! The shortest cruise we had ever taken before was four nights (longest were a couple of 21-night sailings), and I have to say that in most cases I think a two-night cruise just has to be more nuisance than it is worth. Why did we do it? I think I’ll likely get around to telling that story some time in the next couple of weeks, but I might delay until after our next trip, which will cover the entire latter half of March.

Edit: O.K., so the abbreviated version of "that story" is that a two-night cruise would earn us the few more points in the cruise line's loyalty program that were needed to give us extra benefits on "our next trip" -- a 15-night cruise starting just three weeks later. First description of that longer cruise appeared here, as part of a discussion about whether the spread of the Covid-19 virus would lead to the cancellation of the WoV Spring Fling 2020. Turned out that the general hysteria about the virus became so intense that I cancelled our plans for the longer cruise just 48 hours prior to our departure flight. Some day we will draw the benefits of those added points in the cruise line loyalty program.

The souvenir $1 Baha Mar chip is a white clay specimen from a “house” mold, with the name of the casino molded twice into each side of the chip, around the perimeter. There are four, narrow edge inserts in a medium blue. The center inlay is white with a black ring providing the background area for the third presentation of the resort/casino name, this time with “Casino & Hotel” appended. The denomination is labeled in black in the center of the central white circle. In each instance, the two words of Baha Mar are separated by the resort’s logo, which I cannot completely identify. I think it is a drawing of either a flower blossom or perhaps an entire plant, maybe some form of a palm, but I don’t really know.

I do not know the manufacturer of this chip, but it looks similar to some of the products from Paulson and Gaming Partners International (whatever name they are operating under now.) Paulson frequently had their top-hat-and-cane logo visible only under UV illumination, and the only things on this chip that fluoresce under UV light (only slightly) are the four edge inserts. Reviewing the history of Baha Mar, I would have to consider the possibility that the chips are from a Chinese manufacturer. The quality looks pretty good to me, but I don’t know about the quality of Chinese-manufactured casino chips.

Happy Leap Day, everyone!

Thanks for pointing out the Bahamas/Caribbean distinction. I can imagine the inconvenience of getting on board and settling in and disembarking is not worth the hassle if you're there for only 2 nights!

Your history about the delays in construction reminded me about my China experience. When I visited China for the first time in 2018, the frequent sight that struck me was the huge number of uncompleted buildings along the countryside and in cities. Along the high-speed train route, you'd see three-story apartment buildings that were just decaying concrete shells. I asked our tour guide in Guilin about that, and she said it was because the construction companies ran out of funding. My joke was that construction companies should say "ok guys, let's not start another building unless we KNOW we can finish it."

As far as the quality of Chinese-manufactured casino chips, I saw an actual good comment on a video that compared the quality of safes that were dropped from a crane. The video showed how a U.S.-made safe stayed mainly intact whereas the one made in China buckled. A person commented that it was an unfair comparison because if you wanted a company in China to make something of high quality, they would do it. But most companies submit orders for inferior products because it saves them money. I suppose that applies to casino chips.

I just finished planning my collecting for my drive down to spring fling as long as Nevada isn’t infested with budlightvirus by then. I’m not sure what percentage of the time this trip actually happens but I planned it anyways cause I enjoy planning collecting trips. So here’s hoping that the virus settles down by then 🤷‍♂️

The first leg of the trip starts on April 24 when my dad and I will drive down to Minneapolis to see the Red Sox for 3 games against the Twins. We do this trip to Minny every year. From Minny dad will fly home and I will head southwest.

Itinerary is as follows:
- April 27 drive to North Platte, NE with stops to vulture in council bluffs Iowa.
- 28th to central city to pick up a chip from Grand Z and try and replace my $1 token from Famous Bonanza with a chip but I don’t think they have tables anymore. After making my way through central city I’ll stop in black hawk for some quick vulturing before moving on. I will then make collecting stops at Santa Claran, Buffalo Thunder and Tesuque before stopping in Santa Fe for the night.
- 29th casino hopping Isleta, Route 66, Sky City, Northern Edge, Fire Rock and Hon-Dah before crashing (sleep not car hopefully) for the night.
- 30th Mazatzal, Yavapi/Bucky’s (only one has chips but I’ll check since I’m there), Cliff Castle and Twin Arrows before ending up in Vegas that night.
-most likely leave Vegas on the 4th to continue collecting. First up is a slight trek into coronafornia I mean California to pick up two name changes and one that just added tables. Jamul and Harrahs Southern California and then the new one is Cahuilla. From Cali I’ll head to the Phoenix area to collect the new Desert Diamond West Valley, Harrahs and then the 3 Gila River casinos that now have their own chips, Vee Quiva, Wild Horse Pass and Lone Butte.
- 5th Fort McDowell, Apache Gold, Apache Sky, Casino of the Sun/Casino Del Sol, Desert Diamond Tucson and Sahaurita (most likely same chips) staying in Tucson for the night
- 6th Inn of the mountain G-ds, Casino Apache (most likely nothing) and then to El Paso, TX for the night where there are two poker rooms.
- 7th Kickapoo Lucky Eagle
- 8th San Antonio 8 poker rooms, probably stay for 2-3 days
- 11th Austin, TX 6 poker rooms stay for 2 days
- 13th Georgetown Poker club 35 mins north of Austin and then another 40 mins north 2 poker rooms in Killeen. Drive to Dallas.
- 14th two poker rooms in Dallas but they just passed something allowing more rooms so there should be about 10 new rooms by then. Stay 3 days
I haven’t mapped out the days yet but the drive back north would include stops at Choctaw Broken Bow, Riverstar, Thunderbird, Tonkawa, Native Lights, 7 clans first council (most likely old chips still) and River Bend in OK. Kansas Crossing and then 3 renamed Iowa casinos, Isle Bettendorf, Q and Casino Queen. The last two stops of the trip will be Sevenwinds in Wisconsin and Cedar Lake in Minnesota which are both renames.

I am still a bit despondent that, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my wife and I felt compelled to cancel the multi-week cruise vacation we were supposed to be on right now. It turns out that had we not cancelled our reservations last Thursday, we would have been on a flight to Chile at the time that the cruise line announced that they were suspending their cruises globally. The ship is still docked in San Antonio, and the cruise line says they are “working with government officials to provide a controlled disembarkation plan to make sure guests have a way to leave the country.” That’s a reference to the passengers on the previous sailing, the ones who were supposed to disembark to make room for passengers on our sailing. Had we gotten on the plane on Saturday, we would have been stuck at either the airport in Santiago or at the pier in San Antonio, with no ship to get on and no transportation home.

Nevertheless, we are at home, and today marks the eighth anniversary of the creation of this thread. I have the intent to commemorate this event each year with a little update on what we have documented thus far regarding the world of chip collecting, but I have not always followed through on that intent. My post last year was here.

What with all of this stuff that’s been going on, I don’t really feel creative enough at the moment to attempt to make an entertaining post of this anniversary report. Instead, I am just updating last year's table of data. Here are some recent statistics about this thread (not going back to the 1982 beginning, because I failed to gather and retain such info) with each of these few recent years' data up to the anniversary date:

	2017	2018	2019	2020
Total chips posted to date	1,009	1,082	1,211	1,263
Chips posted in past year	93	73	129	52
Total posts to date	?	7,014	7,576	8,062
Thread page	648	698	754	802
Total views to date	>1.1 million	1,249,229	1,456,947	1,634,872

I’m anticipating a serious lack of new chips this year, not sure why just a hunch, someone might say a Coronahunch.

Today's e-mail from Wizard of Odds about the $8 Chinese New Year chips may lead to some posts. It led me to this thread anyway.

I've got chips from a couple dozen casinos that are not listed in the directory in the first few posts of this thread. Great job organizing all that info by the way, seems like a huge effort. I probably have a few chips that haven't been posted yet from casinos that are already represented, though I'm not yet sure how to easily find all the chips from a given casino in this thread.

I tried to post a chip from New Hampshire, I've got 38 New Hampshire chips from 12 card rooms. The other under-represented locale I have is Ireland, where I have 18 chips from 7 locations, none of which are mentioned in the index. I couldn't find a way to upload an image, any advice is appreciated so I could contribute. Once that's figured out, should I do a separate post per chip or per location?

Steve

Welcome to the forum RideTheEdge!
Postings images here is easy once you get the hang of it. You need to upload the image publicly elsewhere, as they are not stored here. One site to upload images would be imgur (there are many others to choose from).
To post an image you use the image tag [ img = URL ] (but with no spaces and replace URL with your link)
I will use Doc's Baha Mar picture from above as an example. His picture address is:
http://www.4-sqr.com/images/chips/small/CARIB/Baha_Mar.jpg
But the image won't show in the post until the image tag is used.

If you quote my post you can see how it was done.
More information here:
https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/info/help/1-formatting-codes/
HTH, and I look forward to you seeing your chips.

Hi Steve! Welcome to the forum! We generally do 1 post per location. If you have multiple chips from the same place, you can just do many images in that post. The index at the front of this thread links to the first posting - the "official" posting - of a chip from a casino. If other members have had additional chips to share, those posts are usually close to the "official" post in the thread. Of course there are exceptions, like if a trip results in 20 chips being collected and posted at once or if a new member joins the board.

Thank you Keeneone and rdw4potus!

After much effort my attempt to post chip images failed. Finally I noticed the error message, "New members are not allowed to post links until they reach 20 posts."

I'll find an excuse to post elsewhere a few times and then post some chip images.

Steve

Edit: test

End test

Quote: RideTheEdge

I'll find an excuse to post elsewhere a few times and then post some chip images.

Steve

That's not within the spirit of the rules. Make contributions and you'll soon get there.

Hello OnceDear,

Sure. Take a look at the other post I made "Mapping the symbols on each reel of a video slot" <link to post suppressed> https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/gambling/slots/34639-mapping-the-symbols-on-each-reel-of-a-video-slot/#post766827) and you'll see I'm not just racking up 20 garbage posts.

But I also don't think the spirit of a rule preventing the posting of a picture really applies to a thread whose specific purpose is to post pictures. After several hours taking and editing chip photos, finding a site to host them, and then drafting a (yet to be submitted) post to this forum where I hoped to share and contribute, it is a little frustrating to be stymied by a hard to find error message in a subdued color. I just noticed that you are an Admin. Perhaps in this case it is appropriate to override the restriction.

Steve

Welcome to the forum, Steve. We look forward to seeing your new chip posts when the system allows you to show the images. Please try to tell us a bit about each casino and/or each chip and/or your visit there, just to make the topic more interesting to a wide audience. Stories can be nice!

As rdw4potus mentioned, we have long had a general format for the "official" Casino Chip of the Day post -- neglecting the fact that after this many years such a CCotD post is no longer a daily event. It is that official post that I include in the index at the beginning of the thread. If other members have different chips from the same casino, they typically post images of their chips soon after the official post, as rdw also mentioned.

Now there are occasionally other chips from a casino that are posted much later, usually because a new member with such chips arrives on our scene or because the casino issued a new series of chips. In that case, whoever posts the image just tells us what's new about this chip, without any special formatting of the post. When I notice such a post, I usually go back to where the "official" post for that casino was made and add a comment about where to find the new image(s). If I made the original post, I'll add a postscript to that post; if someone else posted it first, I will add a comment to the next post I made in the thread, which usually isn't too far behind.

If a casino changes its name, from my perspective that makes it a "new" casino, and we can have another official CCotD post for that casino. Of course, on very rare occasions, that can lead to some potential confusion. The Sahara on the Las Vegas strip was renamed to SLS, and we have chips from both establishments included in this thread. Then last autumn, the name was changed back to Sahara. I have seen the new chips posted on another site, but no one has yet collected one and shown it to us in this thread. I had intended to get one during our "Spring Fling" gathering, which was supposed to happen this weekend, but that's all on hold for a while. When the time comes, we'll figure some way to distinguish the "Sahara (closed)" from the "Sahara (former SLS)."

Wow Doc. You put a lot of effort into organizing this thread. I'm impressed.

My first post will be a card room that changed it's name but retained the chips from its previous incarnation, adding a twist to the way you handle "new" casinos. There aren't any posts for that room included in your copious index so no confusion should arise. There are some small rooms in New Hampshire.

Thanks for the hearty welcome.

Steve

Quote: RideTheEdge

My first post will be a card room that changed it's name but retained the chips from its previous incarnation, adding a twist to the way you handle "new" casinos.

In that scenario, I suggest that you post your chip to represent the card room under the name that appears on the chip. In the post, you can mention that the place has since changed name to whatever and is still using the old chips. That way, if they ever get new chips and you collect one, you can make a new CCotD post for the "new" card room.

Quote: RideTheEdge

Thank you Keeneone and rdw4potus!

After much effort my attempt to post chip images failed. Finally I noticed the error message, "New members are not allowed to post links until they reach 20 posts."

I'll find an excuse to post elsewhere a few times and then post some chip images.

Steve

Edit: test

End test

Hello, Steve, and welcome to the forum!

OD probably didn't offer to do an override because he was unsure, as was I, whether we could override the suppression filter. Turns out I can. (See your post above, not this copy). At this time you have 7 posts.

So, if you would like to start posting chip images and backgrounds here, please do the following :

1. Upload an image to a 3rd party host such as imgur.

2. Copy the link they give you with a .jpg extension, and paste it into your post.

3. I will check this thread daily, and edit your post to allow the images to show.

It won't be necessary beyond the 20 posts, but in the mean time, I'm happy to provide the service. And thanks in advance for your contributions. I'm sure several of us are very interested to see what you have!

Thanks BBB! It'll be great to see some new chips posted, especially now when we can't get out and travel or collect.

Quote: Doc

In that scenario, I suggest that you post your chip to represent the card room under the name that appears on the chip. In the post, you can mention that the place has since changed name to whatever and is still using the old chips. That way, if they ever get new chips and you collect one, you can make a new CCotD post for the "new" card room.

Ah back to this debate again Doc? Lol

State: New Hampshire
City: Keene
Casino: Howie's Poker Room

To honor Keeneone for helping this newbie, I offer this Keene, New Hampshire one dollar denomination chip (well, and a $2 chip also) from Howie's Poker Room. This room was located off the lobby of the Best Western Hotel. I stopped by when travelling through Keene one day years ago, probably on the way back from a college tour with one of my kids, and did not have time to play so I just purchased $1 and $2 chips. I think the room went through at least one name change, but kept the chips from the old room.

Unfortunately, I don't recall the name the room previously had (they told me when I bought the chips), and the label on the chip just says "Universal Gaming" which I doubt was the name of the poker room. The chip guide at mogh dot org (sorry, web site links are suppressed) says, "1st opened in the Best Western Sovereign Hotel at 401 Winchester Avenue, Keene, originally used generic chips. Moved to new location around 2017 and now have chips with the name on them." According to that website the chips say "Keene Poker" but poker atlas says the name is Keene Casino (formerly Keene Poker Room.) If I go back (and the room survives) I'll post a new chip of the day with the verified new name. For now, I'm just listing this chip as Howie's Poker Room, the name it had when I stopped in, though feel free to advise any edits.

New Hampshire has several small poker rooms. At first they could only offer limit poker cash games with a $4 maximum bet. Tournaments could be no-limit, so they had lots of tournaments. Then they added no-limit, but with some strange rules to limit the buy in amounts which eventually got relaxed. The rules recently changed to allow poker with more common limits. I did a few trips to cover many of the rooms back in the early 201x's when I lived in Connecticut though I hit the room in Keene before those trips. They also have table games, though for most of the rooms the focus is poker.

BBB, that's very kind of you to offer to edit my posts so the chip images appear. Thank you. Unfortunately I can't put links or even the names of web sites or any period delimited strings in my post, so I hope the following isn't too cryptic:

State: New Hampshire
City: Salem
Casino: Rockingham Park

I think Rockingham Park was once a racetrack, though there was no racing by the time I first visited in January 2013. At that time only limit poker and tournaments were offered and the $4 betting limit applied. Cash chips came in $1/$2/$4 denominations. I don't play much limit poker, but did my best as I collected one chip of each denomination. They had a pretty good sized poker room, but that was dwarfed by the size of the mostly vacant facility. I visited again a few times in late 2015 and found no-limit games. At that point the $1 chip changed color and they added $5 (and probably higher denoms as well, though I'm not certain of that.) The room has since closed down and two new rooms opened up nearby.

The room was often cold and the decor wasn't that pleasant. Food options were limited.

The chips are ceramic with the same image on the front and back. Not pictured are the sides of the chip which have the denomination and a graphic mimicking clay chip edge spots.

$4 limit variety:




After no-limit poker was added:



I'm not as diligent collecting players's cards, but I have quite a few. Let me know if I shouldn't post these (I'll redact the name). For now I'll take a chance include the Rockingham/Seabrook player's card as well:

Thank you BBB for editing my posts!

Looks like 600x600 is too big. 180x180 looked tiny in the image editor, but I'll use that resolution for the rest.

Steve

Quote: RideTheEdge

Thank you BBB for editing my posts!

Looks like 600x600 is too big. 180x180 looked tiny in the image editor, but I'll use that resolution for the rest.

Steve

I really think the images you posted are good quality, and would not suggest you diminish them in size or detail. If you've read back at all in this thread, you would find several discussions of the smallest detail of manufacture, security features, colors, and logo interpretation. That's part of the fun of this thread. So the more resolution and color fidelity, the better.

Ah, thanks for the validation. I spent a few minutes figuring out how to edit the images in imgur to make them smaller, but would have to edit the image urls in my post to use the edited versions. Since the large size is acceptable, I'll spend the time preparing images of chips instead.

I guess it's rather obvious that I am one of the nerdier posters when it comes to chip posts. I store images in two sizes -- 180x180 pixels and 600x600 pixels. I post them so that the smaller image appears in the main post, but if you click on that image, the larger one appears in a separate window. It's a little bit of a nuisance, but it has worked well for me, giving a compromise between a size that fits well in a text post and a size that shows good details.

Now that your images are showing up, I will add these posts to the index. I'm posting from my phone right now, and I have to go to my computer to edit the index.

I saw you mention use of multiple resolutions in one of your early posts, and just looked at an example to see how it is done. For now BBB is editing my posts to add the images so I'll just post the higher resolution until I have permission to include links. After that I'll give multiple resolutions a try to keep the posts from getting huge.

I typically have multiple chips for each casino, usually at least $1, $5, and whatever is available in between. If there is more than one $1 I'll try to get all of those. Sometimes I get multiple $5 chips. Tried that at the Hard Rock in Vegas and almost every $5 chip was different! I just kept one of those, too expensive otherwise. I hear some people specialize in Hard Rock chips.

Howie's Poker Room and Rockingham Park have now been added to the thread index, bringing the total count to 1,265.

Thanks for bringing the thread back to life. Those two chips are the first two added to this thread since February, and I think they make #5 and #6 since a chip I posted last October 1. Six new casino chips in seven months must set some kind of lethargy record for a casino-chip-of-the-day theme.

Well I’m supposed to be posting my chips from Asia and I’m supposed to be currently collecting in OK,TX, NM and AZ but I heard there is this virus going around.

Virus???








;-)

State: New Hampshire
City: Salem
Casino: Chaser's

After Rockingham Park closed 2 new card rooms in Salem with much different stories eventually tried to fill the void. The first to open in 2017 was Chasers, a nice room with poker tables, blackjack, roulette, and some other table games. They also have a bar and a kitchen with decent food you can order and eat right at the poker table.

Serving the lucrative Boston market (about an hour away) Chasers was always busy. By this time I was living outside Boston and could visit a little more often. One Saturday night there was a wait list of over 100 people with a wait over an hour. Not sure how badly competition from the recently opened Encore affected them, I haven't been since Encore opened.

Chip denominations are $1, $2, $5, $25, and two styles of $100. At the poker table the $100 "chips" were rectangular plaques. Table games used normal round $100 chips. Front and back of the chip are the same.




And the player's card:

State: New Hampshire
City: Salem
Casino: Cheers

The second room to open in Salem New Hampshire after Rockingham closed is Cheers. Cheers announced their opening before I even heard of Chasers, but Chasers was running for a little while before Cheers opened its doors. Cheers has a nice layout inside. Roomier than Chasers with more tables, nice decor, and hardly any people. The night (see last post) Chasers had a huge waiting list, I drove the couple miles to Cheers to find one table running and had no trouble getting a seat. They couldn't even get Chasers overflow. One of the regulars at the table thought it would be so cool if they could ever get two tables running. Everyone knew each other, the dealers were competent. I had no idea why this place was so empty.

A quick news search last night revealed a series of unflattering articles about Cheers in the Eagle-Tribune of North Andover Massachusetts detailing a variety of disputes eventually leading to closure. The room has a website and a Facebook page with a post as late as March of this year saying they intend to reopen.

In addition to the normal denominations there is also a simple 50 cent embossed dice chip with no branding. I'm posting all of them for completeness. The ceramic chips have a nice texture on the face with the denomination (both numeric and script) on the edge. Front and back are the same.

Oh man, these new posts are great! It's awesome to see new chips, especially now. But I'm confused because I should have some of these. I drove from Halifax to Montreal to Manchester (via Keene), then back to Halifax in 2015. I'm going to have to dig to find those chips (or realize I don't have them).

rdw4potus, of the chips posted so far I wouldn't be surprised if you only had Rockingham Park. The Keene room apparently changed it's name often though you might have chips from another version of the Keene room. Cheers and Chasers didn't open until 2017, so you would have missed those.

There will probably be some overlap in the upcoming posts.

Steve

I love the colours of the Cheers chips, thanks for the posts.

I really like the Cheers chips too. The texture is like a fine sandpaper and oddly pleasant. So much about that room was nice. The tables, the bar, lots of TVs, the general look of the room. Unfortunately it seemed to be so poorly run it couldn't even survive in a market that had (before Encore) so many poker players they couldn't get a seat.

After taking the photos to post, I searched online to see if I could buy some Cheers chips to use as a personal set. Until the owner gives up on the idea of re-opening that won't happen. I'm not even sure how to find the chips if he does close down for good.

Quote: RideTheEdge

I really like the Cheers chips too.

Well, I happen to like the Chasers chips, with the logo fish wearing his fake shark fin. Nice to see a little humor being thrown around occasionally.

State: New Hampshire
City: Seabrook
Casino: Seabrook Greyhound Park

Located at an old dog track, Seabrook has a similar feel to it's larger sister site Rockingham Park. Large old building, sparse decor, lots of empty space. The tournaments here were more popular than the cash games, but there were usually several tables of low stakes poker running. As a smaller room, more people knew each other. The bar right near the poker tables also served food. I stopped going to Seabrook after Chasers opened, though I enjoyed playing there. The games were fairly loose and weak, but Chasers was closer and nicer.

The MoGH chip guide says Seabrook closed about a year ago.

The chips are somewhat ordinary, front and back the same.

State: New Hampshire
City: Nashua
Casino: Boston Billiard Club

Most of the floor space at Boston Billiards is pool tables that you can rent by the hour. When you walk in, the front door is opened for you by pleasant security staff. After walking through a sea of pool tables and past a couple lounges with pool tables and couches (I presume those rooms could be rented out) you reach the back of the facility. There are table games back there, but it used to be full of poker tables. They added another room off the back with just the poker tables about the time Chasers was opening and Encore was under construction. They have lots of promotions, mostly high hand jackpots. The number of tables is small enough, and the jackpots frequent enough, that winning them is feasible. I won a couple ($1500 for quad queens, and $100 "splash the pot") in about 15 trips. I don't recall rake being excessive (well, relative term) despite all the jackpot money. Gotta love competition.

Though it's been just over a year since I've been there this place has (had? I'm uncertain on what tense to use with the lockdown) a nice vibe, especially on weekend nights. Bar/food service is pretty good, lots of people having fun. Dates hoot and holler around the roulette table even at the small stakes. It got a little quieter in the poker room after that was sectioned off which is good if you want to focus on playing cards. Makes the place feel more like a poker room and less like a fun bar.

Here are some chip images, front and back the same:




(edited to add image links now that I have enough posts)

As an addendum to the chip images for Howie's Poker Room in Keene, I found images of the same chips (labelled "Universal Gaming") on the MoGH chip guide, see http://chipguide.themogh.org/ch_chip2.php?id=NHMASH The chips are listed under Sharky's Poker Room in Manchester New Hampshire.

Manchester is over an hour away from Keene. There is a second Sharky's listed in the chip guide that is closer to Keene, but different chips are pictured for that location. My guess is that as rooms in NH open and close the chips get shared or moved around. I've got another post (or perhaps two) coming up with a similar issue.

rdw4potus, do you have the same chips from your trip (but not from Keene) to clarify or further confuse the mapping of chips to gaming locations? Perhaps date(s) in service as well as location/name and chip image is needed to completely characterize some of these chips, but I don't have good enough records on when these chips were collected to provide that.

Steve

(edited to add the link to chipguide.themogh.org, now that I can. Yay!)

I found 6 chips from NH. I'm confused and looking into things further. I appear to have chips from NB that are also not covered in the thread yet, as well as $5 versions of chips covered by PG, Tomspur, and Doc for places in PEI, QC, and ME. So I apparently didn't ever take the pictures of these or post anything about them. There's about 20 more from NM, CO, and NV that appear to be covered in the index where I haven't posted the $5 versions. Drat.


For NH, I have:
Granite State Poker club (GSP) - almost surely not collected at this property, which closed in 2012 (before I made my trek)
The River card room
Universal Gaming - matches Steve's Howie's chips from Keene, but I didn't stop in Keene, so I'm not sure how/when/where this came from.
Rockingham Park
Seabrook
The Lodge at Belmont