[Spaceman Spiff]

Manufacturer: Copag
Retailer(s): Holdem Poker Chips, Copag Cards, Caragail’s
Average Price: $19.99 per double deck
Material: PVC Plastic

Copag is a Brazilian company that has become one of the leaders in the plastic playing card market. Copags are offered in bridge or poker sizes, regular or jumbo index, and with a variety of back designs. Copag recently began selling four color decks. In the four color deck, diamonds are blue, clubs are green, and hearts and spades maintain their normal red and black colors. Four color is a common setting seen in online poker rooms, but real life decks had been all but impossible to find. Copag has changed that.

Pros:

• Four colors! Flushes are easier to spot is the main advantage.
• Also, you're getting high quality from Copag with a replacement card program in most cases if you should ever have a defect.

Cons:

• At last check they are only available in poker size, regular index.
• Also, in poor lighting the colors can be hard to distinguish defeating the purpose of having the four colors.

Price

As with any new product, you can expect to pay a premium. This is especially true for something that is such a natural fit considering the thousands of people playing online and using the four color setting. Currently the four color decks are going for close to $20. Sometimes you can find shipping deals. As production ramps up and potential competitors come out with their own four color decks, I would expect these to eventually settle out to the normal Copag cost of around $15 per double deck. This is all assuming that they do catch on and become a sought after item. Some online stores are already out of stock, so I think that may be happening.

Currently, the Copag four color deck is only available in poker size, regular index. The card backs are red/blue. At this time there is no word on whether there will be a bridge size, different indices, or different back designs in the future.

Feel

The feel of the four color deck is identical to the feel of any other Copag card. It is a plastic card and is going to be a whole different world if you are used to paper decks. Copags have a little bit of texture to them and a nice degree of stiffness as well. The texture helps prevent the cards from having a tendency to stick together and also makes dealing easier. The stiffness gives them a substantial feel and makes shuffling fairly easy as well.

As with any plastic deck, this is quite a bit of slipperiness to them, especially when first opened. In my experience with Copags though, this tends to diminish through use. The first few games, it can be a chore trying to keep the top card on the deck after setting it down. Over time, this becomes much less of a problem. It is a valid complaint, but really just a minor nuisance compared to the great benefits of a plastic deck.

Looks

Rather than go in depth about the look of Copag cards in general, I’m going to focus on the four color aspects. As I stated above, the departure is in the diamonds and the clubs. In this deck, diamonds are blue and clubs are green. The spades are still black and the hearts are still red. When you think about it, the colors make sense.

I don’t know how much truth there is to it, but the story goes that decks of cards originally did feature different colors for the individual suits. This goes back to when decks are cards were hand made and essentially pieces of art. When the printing press rolled around and mass production of cards became possible, there was a drawback. It was much more expensive to do multiple colors. So somebody decided to make things cheaper by only using the now common red and black.

Other than the different colors, the deck appears the same as any other regular index Copag card. It uses the same fonts, the same artwork, etc. It is also printed in the same manner as all the other Copag cards and this is where some complaints arise. Whatever process Copag uses, it seems to result in a lighter print compared to other manufacturers. If you look closely at a printed area, you can even see white coming through in the areas of the card with a raised texture. These little white “micro-dots” tend to lighten up the overall print and give an almost washed out look to the card.

In good lighting, this is a minor nuisance at most. However, in poor lighting, and especially if there is some glare, it can cause some problems. With the washed out color and then some glare mixed in, the green clubs and the blue diamonds can appear to be the same color. This is even more true if you are trying to see them across the full length of the table. Now obviously you can still tell the difference between a club shape and a diamond shape, but you can also easily tell the difference between a club and a spade in a regular deck. It kind of defeats the purpose of having four different colors if you can’t easily tell which color is which.

The bottom line is, make sure your poker room has good lighting and this deck will shine.

Security/Originality

While the four color deck is somewhat uncommon for right now, I don’t expect it to stay that way. In any case, this deck will do nothing to stop someone from buying their own and mixing it into your game for nefarious purposes if they really want to. The best security is to periodically count the decks throughout the night to make sure no funny business is going on.

Durability

Durability is a major strength of Copags. They are virtually indestructible under normal game conditions. In fact, you can even bend a card back on itself and it will snap right back to flat in a matter of moments.

In addition to structural durability, Copags are also washable. So if one of your clowns spills a beer on your brand new deck, all is not lost.

Finally, if you do somehow manage to mangle one of your cards, Copag and most of their retailers now offer a single card replacement program. It’ll generally cost you a buck or two, but you can get a deck back into action with the fairly cheap replacement rather than having to go out and buy a new setup.

Reviewers Comments

I’m a big fan of Copag cards and we have been using them exclusively in my games for most of the last year. We started mixing in the four color deck recently and I personally love it. When I played more online, I always used the four color setting. In my mind, there’s no reason not to use it. Especially online, when my mind isn’t always in the game, it was too easy to overlook potential flushes and flush draws on the board. At a quick glance, it was too easy to mistake a club for a spade and so on. It’s much more difficult to mistake blue for black or red for green. Extending the four colors to a live game was just a natural step for me. As it likely is with any group, there will be some bellyachers. They’ll come around though, it only takes a few hands to get used to the new setup.

The only complaint I have right now is that these are only available in poker size and regular index. I’ve become a convert to bridge size the last several months and the poker size cards just don’t feel right to me anymore. If you normally use poker size though, this is a non-issue. We also normally use jumbo index and this also is not available at this time. This is a little bit less of an issue since the four color helps in suit identification, but some of the old guys still like the nice, big numbers visible on the jumbos. If the current deck is successful, I really see no reason why Copag wouldn’t make four color an option on bridge size and/or jumbo index in the future.

The bottom line is, don’t let the traditional view of what a deck of cards should look like cloud your judgment. That’s really the only argument I can see against four color decks. It’s not a gimmick, it can help your game, and now that it’s available on a quality card like a Copag, I’m all for it.