[FLaZ]

Hi!

First: I live in Germany, that means i'm living in the "Third World of Poker Chips"
Shops here only sell the "real clay dice official 11,5g crap chips", no way to get Paulsons/ASMs etc., even Faux Clays, Sopranos or NexGens aren't available/hard to find.

Therefore shipping costs are a serious matter, if ordering chips. Mostly shipping to Germany is a) not possible or b) unaffordable.

So i need a) advice, which chips to buy and b) a shop not busting me by shipping costs.

I search chips with no denomination/label, good stacking and handling (about 10g). Ceramics aren't my thing, clays aren't affordable (but i have really nice ideas about custom ASMs)


This chips i think about:

-Faux Clays (the nipple is disturbing me much)
-Sopranos 10g (unfortunately no yellow chips available)
-NexGens (may be slippery? samples on the run)

I found this chips:

11,5g, injection molded.

I prefer the "Poker" design, because i only play 5 card draw, but the Holdem and Poker chips are same material.
They feel something "smooth", a little bit smoother than the 6g Sopranos, much smoother than dice crap. You can cut with the fingernail in the edge, if you try hard. They have a "clack", no metallic sound, a little bit lower than the Sopranos.

400 Chips with aluminium case, Panda Poker playing cards and 5 dice are by 113€ (~135USD) including shipping.

What do you think, guys?

[jmda]

I think you should get some chips to play with and teach your friends to play hold'em. As you get more players, and/or play more often - upgrade your set.

Hold'em is easy to learn, but is a little more interesting to play than 5 card draw. I personally cannot stand 5 card draw, though I do occasionally play 2 to 7 triple draw, 5 card stud, and every other current casino poker game. I always felt that 5 card draw has too much luck involved and less skill than other poker games.

Ich wuensche viel glueck

[bolgenmod]

Nexgens are slippery indeed. I bought a set without getting samples because they were cheap and because lots of people recommended them. And I thought they looked nicer than the faux clays (which seem to be the favorite cheap chip on this board). But I didn't really like the way the nexgens felt.

That said, it makes a difference if you label them, as many do. I never did because I ended up buying the Pharaohs. (Somewhat ironically, I might sell my nexgens to a friend from Austria who never played poker before he came here and is dying to teach it to his family when he goes home for the holiday!))

You are certainly doing the right thing by getting samples before you buy, especially considering the shipping cost.

And btw, the faux clays are no longer widely available in yellow (which you mention as an issue). The thread on this is in this forum, "Faux Clay owners only." Link: http://chiptalk.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11630

Good luck!!

[Dimes]

Hallo FLaZ

und herzlich willkommen zum Chiptalk-Forum.

I'm also from a "3rd World country" as regards chips, but lately some US chip vendors have started shipping to Europe. Some of them have reasonable shipping rates provided you are satisfied with USPS shipping. I bought 300 ceramic chips and shipment cost about $40. With UPS it would have been about $100 more. But of course, you need to buy relatively expensive chips before it's feasible. If you're looking for 11.5 g injected plastic chips, it probably won't be a good idea to buy them in the States.

The 11.5 g injected plastic chips still feels very slippery to me. After all, on the outside, it's almost the same chip as the 11.5 g metal-slugged chip. But the sound is much better.

TT

[FLaZ]

Originally Posted by Dimes

After all, on the outside, it's almost the same chip as the 11.5 g metal-slugged chip.

The Chips in my pictures above are from pokershop.dk . I disagree with your statement. The feel of these is much better than the dices, more "smooth"/"silky". They can be scratched much easilier than the dices. Add the sound thing, and they are miles away from the dices.
I think, the pokershop.dk injection molded chips are comparable to the All-Ins. I never felt All-Ins but appearance and sound (movies on the All-In site) look very similar to the Poker/Holdem Chips.

[Dimes]

I just held a "POKER" injected chip that I actually got from pokershop.dk in one hand and a dice chip in the other. For me the feel of the surface is as identical as two different chips can be. A slick plastic surface. The sound is completely different, of course. Maybe your dice chip is different from mine. The quality of these types of chips varies a lot. Admitted, the injected plastic chip may be easier to scratch than the slugged chip although I can't scratch it with my fingernail. But compared to other types of chips, the difference in surface between the slugged and injected chip is infinitesimal. So I wouldn't buy it for that reason.

TT

[FLaZ]

Do you also have a AK/Suited design sample from pokershop.dk? Comparing the "Poker" ones with these, i definitely feel a difference. The "Poker" chip feels "smoother" and are much "softer" than the AK/Suited/Diamond design chips.
Maybe you don't feel the little difference, because you are used to high class chips, which i'm unfortunately not.

How do you rate the sound and handling of the "Pokers"? Acceptable, very bad...?
Till my NexGen samples arrive, i only can compare the pokershop.dk samples with each other.

[Dimes]

Actually I have a few hundred AK suited from pokershop.dk (and a couple of hundred in more exotic colours of the same type bought elsewhere). The AKs are quite slick, and comparing the AKs the POKERs, the former feels harder and the latter softer. The AKs even seem harder than my dice chip. If I had to chose between these and those without a metal slug, I would definitely go without. But the difference in sound is still much bigger than the difference in feel.

I haven't got more than one "POKER", and my only "TEXAS HOLD'EM" seems to have chosen to go missing, so I can't really say how they would stack. If the injected chips are indeed a little bit softer than the slugged ones, they would probably stack a somewhat better, which doesn't say much as my AKs stack horribly. Stacks of more than 20 are extremely unstable. Maybe there are other people here who have more chips of this type than I who can tell.

TT