Official WPT 11.5g Poker Chips Review

[Niagara_All_In]

Manufacturer: US Playing Card Company
Retailer(s): www.worldpokertour.com, www.ebay.com, Costco, Sam's Club, Zellers
Average Price: These come in sets starting at $79.95 (CAD) for a set of 300 with cards, dice and case.
Material: Composite Resin (advertised as clay filled)
Member Review by: Niagara_All_In

With the WTP TV series taking off like it has, you knew it was only a matter of time before they started to mass market products for the home poker player. So with that in mind, what better item to start with than a set of poker chips.

Price

Costco has been selling these 300 sets for $79.95 (CAD) when they have them and Zellers has them for $89.95(CAD). The WPT store has them on their website for $120(USD) and you can also find them on ebay for various prices.

Feel

The outer areas of the chips are smooth while the inlays are rough and grainy. They feel plasticy but they are not as hard as the dice chips you see all over the net. They are advertised as "clay filled" but this is a subject that has been in discussion on the forums a few times.

These chips shuffle extremely well with very little effort and they don't stick together or have the edges get caught when trying to shuffle them.

They are 11.5 gram chips that are again "Clay Filled". I will get more into this in the sound section. All in all they are ( in my opinion) one of the nicest composite sets out there.

Stacking

Here is where the chips start to diminish. These chips stack nicely if you only want to stack 15-20 at a time. They are very slippery and tend to fall over if you nudge them or are pushing them all into a pot. I have been using my sets 3-5 times a week for about 6 months and there is a great difference from the time I first got them to now when they are worked in and played with. I can now have stacks of 25-35 with no problems. However, compared to other chips, these are in no way good stackers.

Sound

The sound of these chips is great. It's not obvious that they have a metal disc in them as they do not sound like coins when in use. All the other coin filled chips I have seen and played with seem to have that really distinct coin sound to them. These chips have a soft yet noticeable sound .

Looks

These chips have a very basic yet very appealing look to them. The inlay is all white with the WPT logo in the center. The outer area is a solid colour (Grey, Red, Blue, or Black) with white edgespots with a spade in the middle.

In the few sets that I have, I did find a few defects where the outer color had run into the inlay a bit. Out of 600 chips I have only found 2 to be defects.

Security/Originality

Well, being mass produced and the fact that you can buy them in a department store I would have to say the security of these chips is "NONE". For my home games this is not an issue as we play with a good bunch of people that I am not worried about. But if I were going to hold a bigger game with more people then I would use customs.

As for Originality, they are WPT chips so they need to have their logo on them. One thing that would have been nice would be to have a different picture on the other side. I have seen this same design in a few chips now just with a different logo in the inlay (Bicycle chips and a few others)

Durability

I find these chips VERY durable and good quality. As mentioned, I have used my chips for about 6 months with them being in play 3-5 nights a week and they are in perfect shape with the exception of a few minor scuffs on the edges.

Reviewers Comments

Overall I really like these chips for the price. For $79.95(CAD) I got 300 chips, a really nice case (nice locking and sturdy latches, felt lined with the WPT embroidered logo), cards, and dice. Will I continue to use these chips? YES. Will I get other sets of chips to use? YES. These are one of the best quality composite chips I have seen.

Chip Pictures

Its hard to see the defect in the pic but I have outlined it in red. You can see the greyish area that looks like the black mixed with the white when in molding.



Sorry for the quality of this pic, my other digital camera is on the fritz



This photo is from CaptLego and confirms the metal insert. I guess their "Clay Filled" ad on the package is bogus.

[jbones]

Official WPT 11.5g Chips
Purchased from: Actually won them off the Texas Hold 'Em scratch ticket
Price Paid: 300 for $10 (see above)

I'm not going to lie, when I first got these chips I thought they were the greatest things ever, especially since they were nearly free. I won them as well as a folding poker table off the first $10 Texas Hold 'Em scratch ticket I ever bought. I ended up selling them to a friend. He still thinks they're great, but this site convinced me otherwise
The design on these chips was very nice in the eyes of someone who had at that point only seen or played with dice chips and plastic Bicycle chips. Today I still appreciate the elegance of the design, especially on the Bellagio set of these chips. I've never played in a home game where I felt I needed stacks larger than 20, and these were certainly adequate stackers to make it that high. I can imagine that they wouldn't be very good at stacking much higher, though. I know I wouldn't pay $120 for a set of 300 of these now, and I'm not sure I would have a year or so ago either when I won my set. To summarize:

Pros:
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• Just like the dice chips, they really are pretty good for the price. A smooth design, pleasant sound, adequate stacking ability.
• If you lose any of these or damage them, they are extremely easy to replace.
• If you have a set of nice chips that you don't like to break out for impromptu games, you can use these to avoid harm to your expensive chips.

Cons:

• They aren't very stable in large stacks
• Not available with printed denominations
• Not at all secure unless you go with the all around more appealing Bellagio set

Still, to someone without extensive experience with nice chips, these aren't a bad choice for the price.