[softchewy]

Manufacturer: Kuo Kau
Retailers: 5Star Deals, Poker Supply, We Do It All Vegas, Amazon, ItsCheapOnline (ebay store)
Average Price: $6 per 2 deck setup
Material: PVC Plastic
Member Review by: softchewy

The cards I will be reviewing are Poker (wide) sized cards from Royal. Royal Plastic Playing Cards may be a new name to many people. Many players recognize the names of some or most of the major plastic card manufacturers (KEM, Dal Negro, Copag, Gemaco, etc.), but few may recognize the Royal name. The cards are manufactured in Taiwan, but that is about all the information concerning the manufacturing of these cards I thought I could find from the cards themselves or their packaging. I was interested in finding more information about the manufacturer so I searched around, but came up empty. I then went to open another deck and noticed that the tiny plastic strip used for opening the packaging said “Kuo Kau Original Royal Made In Taiwan” on it.

Kuo Kau, established in 1979, makes cards under the Royal and Queen brand names. I have also seen cards with the name Sunny Pro and Royal Pro which have the exact same packaging with the Kuo Kau trademark. You can visit their website above for more info. But this isn’t all that important since what we are concerned about is the cards and their playability, look, feel etc... so on to the review.

Price

$3.68 to $10 per 2 deck setup. I have seen other places on the web charging more than $10 per 2 decks, but I would discourage anyone from paying that much. At the time of this review the lowest price I found was through Amazon.com sellers (see link above); one named “pokerlord” the other “phatpoker”. The price for a 2 deck setup was $3.68 and $3.69 respectively, plus $4.99 shipping. Shipping rate is in accordance with Amazon.com rates since the cards are listed under Sport & Outdoors category.

The 4 decks I own were purchased through the eBay seller listed above (itscheaponline). The price I paid for the 4 decks was $10 plus $5 shipping. I must mention the seller offers combined shipping for any additional cards purchased and I did purchase 2 decks each of KEM, Dal Negro, and Gemaco at the same time. My total shipping cost was $5 for all 10 decks.

Feel

Slick and slippery are the first words that come to mind when handling the Royal cards. If you have played with Gemaco plastic cards then you may have an idea of what slick cards feel like. Well the Royal cards are even more slippery than the Gemaco cards and have less texture; in fact the texture is almost non-existent. They have a fairly thin feel to them compared to other plastic playing cards and paper cards. When stacked next to other plastic cards (KEM, Copag, Dal Negro, Gemaco) and paper cards (Bee, Bicycle, Gemaco) they were the shortest. To match up the height of 52 Royal cards I removed the following # of cards from the listed decks:

KEM Arrow (bridge size)- 11 cards
Gemaco Star (poker size) – 9 cards
Dal Negro Freedom (poker size) – 7 cards
Bicycle plastic coated (poker size) – 6 cards

Shuffling / Sound

These are slippery cards, and shuffling them will prove challenging for the inexperienced. They are extremely flexible, too flexible for my tastes. I do have to say that they are pretty quiet when shuffled. But to me, that is not very important, and generally isn’t a reason to purchase one deck over another, unless of course you are having a clandestine game for one reason or another.

Looks

The faces of these cards are the whitest I have seen. The colors are also very deep, making for excellent contrast. There were a couple of cards with some imperfections in the ink (see pic of the 9 of Spades below). The font and face cards are nearly identical to the U.S Playing Cards decks I have; Bicycle, Tally-Ho and Bee. The picture of the Kings below shows Royal cards on top and Tally-Ho on the bottom. I say nearly, because there are some slight design changes and coloration differences on certain face cards and the suits are smaller on the Royal cards as compared to the U.S. Playing Card decks. I have to assume there is some licensing agreement between the two companies.

Security/Originality

Since most cards are readily available from retail locations, online or traditional, it is always difficult to prevent outside cards from being introduced without the use of a custom, rare or out of circulation deck. The red on the face of the diamond and heart suited cards is not security ink (the darker red ink that makes it harder for other players to determine if the color is black or red from a distance), but it is darker than most other decks I have used.

Durability

In normal play these seem to wear well, maybe a little faster than some other plastic cards (color fading slightly), but then again they can be replaced for a fraction of the price of other plastic cards. I did test the joker card by throwing it against a wooden door. On the 3rd throw, a piece of one corner broke off (see photo below). If you get sucked out and decide to wing one, don’t be surprised if you end up with a “marked” deck.

Reviewers Comments

When all is said and done, I would say these are a decent deal for an inexpensive plastic card. They will definitely outlast a paper deck, that is as long as you don’t test their mettle against a wooden door. If you put a lot of mileage on your decks but don’t want to buy new paper decks every other tourney/game night, than you might want to give these a shot. That being said, these cards pale in comparison to other plastic cards such as KEM, Dal Negro, Copag. These “bigger” name plastic cards are in another league when it comes to feel and playability (they have a reputation for a reason). Personally I would spend the extra money and buy one of the following brands; in my order of preference Dal Negro, KEM (very close 2nd and occasionally moves into 1st), or Copag.

Card Pictures

New Deck


Plastic Case - Cardboard Slipcover Removed


Back Design


Ace of Spades Design


Kings - Royal Plastic Cards top row, Tally-Ho Cards bottom row


Queen of Hearts Design



10 of Diamonds


Imperfections in 9 of Spades



7 of Clubs


Joker with broken corner after 3 throws against a wooden door


Sunny Pro - Also Manufactured by Kuo Kau

[Matthew]

Royal Playing Cards
Purchased from: Local Game Room Supply Store
Price Paid: $4 each single deck

I purchased 2 decks of the Royal Playing cards before I had heard of Copag, Dal Negro or Modiano. I already owned a set of original KEM Arrows (green/brown bridge size) so that was my baseline for plastic cards. In essence these are the worst plastic cards out there. They are very flexible and very staticy, if they fall to the floor, they will will pick up evey piece of dirt and pet hair. Don't waste your money on these cards.

Pros:

• They are inexpensive and will last longer than paper cards.
• The single deck case is nice. I have a single deck of original Kems I now store in the Royal case.

Cons:

• Very flexible and slippery, very difficult to shuffle.
• They can be brittle, my kids have broken corners off.
• Have a tendancy for static cling for dirt, dust, pet hair etc. Keep them off the floor.

[carstairs]

Royal plastic Playing Cards
Purchased from: Retail store
Price Paid: $6 CDN for two decks

I picked up a couple decks of these as they were very cheap for plastic cards and I am always looking for an inexpensive alternative to Kems or Copags.

Here are my impressions: I certainly wasn't impressed with the quality or aesthetics of the cards (although I have to agree with an earlier review - the single deck box is great). They are extremely thin, flimsy, and difficult to both shuffle and pick off the table. We tried them out in our weekly game and they lasted about three hands before we went back to Copags.

Pros:

• inexpensive
• more durable than paper cards (but not much)
• the case is great for storing your single decks of Kems

Cons:

• very slick and hard to manage
• feel cheap and flimsy
• not nearly as durable as other brands of plastic cards (i.e. Kem, Copag, Dal Negro)
• visible flaws on card backs, essentially "marking" some cards

[Gordian]

Purchased: Got them as a gift
Price: ^^

These are actually the first plastic cards i owned and i gotta say that i liked them a lot. There are weekly tournaments here in my hometown, which are played with these cards. They make a h u g e difference to playing with paper cards and are quite nice for beginners. Their look is nice and quite clean, as long as you keep them clean of course
The color flaws mentioned above are quite annoying. By having played with many different decks because of their use in the tournaments i can say that only very few cards are marked visible to other players on the backside from the beginning, about one card in around 20 decks or something. So, if you decide to buy some, better buy 2 or 3 decks, so that you can replace single cards.

Pros:
- Price!
- Durability in relation to paper cards
- Design (brilliant colors)
- Quality (compared to other cheapskate cards)

Cons:
- Quality (compared to high end cards)
- Bridge size
- The color flaws mentioned above
- slippery, you shouldn't play them on glass table or something similar

[Ienick72]

Purchased for bar game
$2.00 per deck

I run a couple bar poker games and like to use nicer equipment than others. I use ceramic chips, padded tables and plastic cards. People enjoy coming to my games because of these things. I get to do my own research on cards buy running them threw many sessions of bar poker to find out how they play and there durability. I bought the Royal cards at the Life Gaming Expo at this years WSOP from a vendor that was close by for cheap money. After feeling the cards I knew that I wouldn't care using them all night in my game but for bar poker they may be just the ticket. The 1st night they were in play I only got a few complaints of the slickness but all in all I got good feed back. I normally deal for the final table and actually like using them. They are easy on the hands because of how thin they are and with experience they are easy to handle. After a number weeks the slickness is going away, I'm sure due to smoke and sweaty hands but they feel better than when new. I have not found any defects or had any broken cards to this point and the cards are holding up very well. At this price I will probably not even wash them when it comes time and just toss them for the price. For the price, even at $3.50 a deck it's tough to beat.

Pros.
-Cost slightly more than paper cards
-Durability seems very good for price
-Color is very nice

Cons.
-Slippery
-Somewhat brittle
-Quality is below other cards