Poker Chip Guide: Clay Poker Chips vs. Plastic Poker Chips

This clay poker chips guide is written for those who are running their own home poker cash game.  Unless your home tournament features large fields (over 4 tables) and high buyins, there’s no reason to special order clay poker chips for a home tournament; an inexpensive set purchased on e-Bay should suffice.

There are 3 main reasons you should use clay poker chips in your home cash game instead of basic plastic chips.

1.        Security of Clay Poker Chips:  It’s VERY easy for an unscrupulous player to go on e-Bay or to Wal-Mart and buy a set of cheap plastic chips to smuggle into your game.  Clay poker chips, on the other hand, must be special ordered from the manufacturer.  So, unless you’re running a higher stakes game, it is not cost effective for a thief to custom order clay chips to smuggle into your game.  Even though clay poker chips are slightly more expensive, this factor alone could save you hundreds or thousands in the long run.

2.       Quality of Clay Poker Chips:  Your players will notice right away the difference in quality between plastic poker chips and clay poker chips.  Their weight, sound when they “clink” together, and their feel and texture make clay poker chips stand head and shoulders above plastic poker chips and give your game a classy, “Old Las Vegas” feel.

3.       “Signature” factor of Clay Poker Chips:  Its likely that every other home game in your area uses the cheapest plastic chips they can find.  If you want the best (wealthiest) players to come to your game, you want it to have its own signature and touch of class.  Clay poker chips, along with quality tables and chairs, are an essential part of giving your game a “signature” feel and set you above other home games…and maybe even your local casino!

Does this mean that Clay Poker Chips are for everyone?  Absolutely not!  I recommend them only for those hosts with cash games of at least $100 buyin and up.  Also, even if your game does feature higher buyins, you probably shouldn’t invest in clay poker chips unless you host your game on a REGULAR basis: at least two times a month.  If you only have a once a month or less cash game, you can forgo clay poker chips and stick with the cheap plastic poker chips.  And since clay poker chips can cost 40-50 cents per chips for a 1000 chip set, they are obviously not intended for hosts on a very strict budget.  Even still, they will last forever and are a great long term investment in my opinion.

FREE REPORT #4: The REAL REASON THAT SO FEW POKER PLAYERS ARE CASHING IN ON THE AMAZING OPPORTUNITY RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. (and no, its NOT what you think)

In my first 3 FREE REPORTS I showed you how casinos try to get us to believe that they don’t make much money from hosting poker games, when in reality it’s a MASSIVELY PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE and, for some casinos, their main source of revenue!

I gave away the one huge secret that the casinos hoped would NEVER get out, and told you that there’s a LOT of money to be made if you know how to cash in on that secret!

What’s more, I even told you that ANYBODY CAN DO IT!

So here comes the million dollar question that must be on your mind:

“If there is so much money to be made hosting poker, and if anybody can do it, why aren’t more people doing it???”

The primary answer to that question is simply this…People just don’t know about the opportunity!

I’d say this is the reason that at least 95% of the people who could be hosting a profitable Private Cash Game aren’t. They simply had no idea that it was possible.  Well…NOW YOU DO!!!

The remaining 5%, those who know that there’s an opportunity there but still aren’t hosting a game, fall into one of two categories

1.        They just don’t want to.  Duh.  Who knows why?  Maybe they are making more than enough money already.   Obviously, there are VERY FEW people who fit into this category.

2.        They are operating under the mis-guided assumption that poker is either illegal where they live, or that they could get into really big trouble for doing it.

I’d say that this accounts for the lion’s share of the people who could be making a very comfortable living from hosting poker, but aren’t.

In most areas, it is perfectly legal to host a friendly, private cash game.  I’ve been to private cash games on literally HUNDREDS of occasions, and the closest I’ve ever seen one come to even speaking to the police was when a neighbor called to put in a noise complaint.  (We simply turned the music down and never heard from them again)

And, if you are unfortunate enough to live in a county or state with backwards, archaic anti-poker laws still on the books there’s still no legitimate reason to be overly worried about getting into trouble for hosting a game.

In my “Home Poker Profits” Cash Game System e-Book, I tell you why.  I even spell out in detail all the steps you need to take to ensure that you can run a successful, highly profitable cash game for years on end and never once have to worry about getting into trouble.

Once again, I’ve NEVER HEARD OF IT HAPPENING.

So there you have it.  I’ve just told you that there’s a tremendous amount of money to be made from hosting a simple, friendly, low stakes poker game.  I’ve told you that anybody can do it. I’ve also let you know that there’s no reason whatsoever to be worried about getting into trouble for doing so, even if you happen to live in the wrong county.

What I haven’t told you is HOW to do it.

With just the information I’ve already given you, you can go out on your own and try to start up a game from scratch.

-Don’t have the necessary equipment yet? You can spend literally hundreds of hours trying to find the best deals on equipment as I did.

-Do you only have 6-8 guys who you play poker with now?  Well then, you’re going to need an additional 20-30 players at the bare minimum to make your game a success.

You can rack your brain and spend countless hours just like I did trying to come up with and test strategies to find new players.  And take my word for it, you’re going to end up finding 10 ineffective ways to find players for every one that actually works.

-What about all the little (and sometimes very big) mistakes we all inevitably make when we try something new and don’t have the proper coaching and guidance to do it properly?  I’ve made countless mistakes trying to teach myself this business using the trial and error approach.  And let me tell you, each and every mistake has cost me at least a hundred dollars, if not many times that!

In the just released e-Book, the “Home Poker Profits” Cash Game System, I cover the answers to not just those questions, but to every conceivable question or problem you’ll EVER run into in trying to host a Private Cash Game.

The “Home Poker Profits” Cash Game System is a complete, step-by-step, A-Z bible on how to start, promote, run, and profit from hosting a Private Cash Game.  It contains over 150 information packed pages that will show you how you can completely change your financial situation just by hosting a friendly, small stakes cash game one or two nights a week.

CLICK HERE to find out more about the “Home Poker Profits” Cash Game System eBook

FREE REPORT #3: THE CASINO CARTEL’S MOST CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET, AND HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM IT!

In my last two FREE REPORTS,  I showed you how casinos try to make us believe that they don’t make much money from hosting poker games, when in reality it’s a MASSIVELY PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE and, for some casinos, their primary source of revenue!

In this article, I’m taking a huge risk by revealing a secret that is tremendously well protected by the casinos.  In fact, if this secret got out, hundreds, if not thousands of poker players like you would put it to use and become very wealthy. At the same time, dozens or even HUNDREDS of casinos would literally be put out of business!

Secret #2:  When it comes to making a profit from hosting poker…ANYBODY CAN DO IT!

You see, not just anybody can host a blackjack, craps, or pai-gow game for very long and make money at it.  The reason is that there are literally THOUSANDS of ways for a good hustler to cheat the house and make a killing.  Any of you who have ever seen an episode of “Breaking Vegas” (a great show by the way.  I highly recommend it) know exactly what I’m talking about.

That’s why casinos spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on security staff, pit bosses, and sophisticated surveillance systems!

And that’s the same reason that they aren’t worried about you siphoning off their table game business by hosting your own Blackjack or Craps game.  The smart ones among us will think it through and decide it’s a bad idea.  The ones who aren’t so bright will give it a go and absolutely lose their shirts when the hustlers inevitably infiltrate their games.

No, the casinos don’t care if you try to host a table game.  What they do care about is people trying to host their own private poker games and taking away their most profitable source of revenue! And, as I’ve already shown, they go to great lengths to feed us misinformation about how much revenue there actually is.

So how is poker different?  How is it that you’ll literally be put in the poorhouse if you try to set up a private blackjack game, but can make serious money from hosting poker???

The answer is deceptively simple.  When you host poker, YOU ARE NOT THE HOUSE.  At blackjack, when the player wins, the house loses (and vice versa).  With poker, it doesn’t really matter to you as the host who wins and who loses!  You’re just there receiving a small piece of every pot.

Sure, there are ways for players to cheat other players at poker.  But it’s much more difficult to do that than it is to cheat the house at blackjack.  For one thing, the players are going to police themselves.  Nobody likes to be cheated, right?  And we as poker players are always careful to watch the other players and protect ourselves.

In percentage table games, on the other hand, the players have absolutely no incentive to watch each other.  After all, what do they care if the house is dumb enough to let itself get cheated?  In fact, players will often work together to cheat the house!!!

And, if you follow the simple but effective steps for cheat-proofing your game that I outline in my just-released “Home Poker Profits” Cash Game System e-Book, you’ll never have to worry about a mechanic cheating players at your game.

I’ve played in dozens of Private Cash Games, and I’ve never once been cheated by a mechanic, or even seen it happen.  Believe it or not, I actually feel safer and more comfortable playing at a private game than I do at most shady casinos.  At least at a private game, I know the players and dealers personally.

On the other hand, You’d be absolutely floored at what kind of shady business goes on at a supposedly “safe” casino…especially when it comes to the “prop” players that casinos hire to keep the tables full!  I’ve even heard first-hand accounts of casinos rigging decks to ensure that a massive bad-beat jackpot would go to a player on the casino payroll!!!  (And where do you think the money went?  Obviously that guy doesn’t get to keep it!)

In these three articles, I’ve told you two major secrets that the Casinos don’t want you to know.  I’ve also showed you that there is a trememdous amount of money to be made from hosting your own Private Cash Game, and moreover, that ANYBODY can do it!

By this time, you should have one very important question on your mind:

“If there is so much money to be made hosting poker, and if anybody can do it, then why aren’t more people doing it???”

The answer to that question is in my next FREE REPORT.

FREE REPORT #2: HOW MUCH MONEY ARE CASINOS REALLY MAKING FROM HOSTING POKER?

If you read my last FREE REPORT, then you understand that casinos everywhere want us to believe that there is very little money to be made from hosting poker.  That they just have poker as a “loss-leader” for their more profitable table games.

Now that we know THAT’S not true, let’s take a minute and consider just how much money there is to be made from hosting a small cash game.

Let’s do some quick math:

The average casino poker game deals anywhere from 35 hands an hour and takes a rake of $5 per hand. (we’re not counting the jackpot drop here)

That’s at least $175 an hour to the house from ONE TABLE!

After paying the dealer and that table’s share of the fixed costs of the house, a poker casino is clearing, conservatively, at least $150 every single hour for each table!!!

The Commerce Casino in Los Angeles has over 200 tables in its main poker room alone. Assuming, conservatively speaking, that the casino is only operating at 75% of capacity this year (we are in a recession, after all), that leaves us with about 150 tables running, on average, 16 hours a day.

150 tables x $150/hour x 16 hours a day x 365 days a year = $131,000,000 in pure profit, every single year…JUST FROM POKER!  And we’re just talking about ONE CASINO!!!  There are over a dozen poker casinos in Los Angeles alone.  When you factor in the profits generated from the online poker rooms, the profits that are earned from hosting poker are truly ASTRONOMICAL.

What most players don’t ever think about, however, is what that $175 an hour means to them as a player.  At a 9 handed table, that means that each player is paying an average of $20 an hour in rake…just to sit in their seat!

So how does that break down for your average $3-6 Limit Hold-em grinder?

Well, numerous poker authorities say that if you’re beating the game at a rate of 1 BB/hr (Big Bets per hour:  Which would be $6/hr at a $3-$6 limit game), you’re doing very well. In fact, you’re actually in the top 10% of ALL PLAYERS!

But wait, didn’t we just say that each and every player is paying about $20 an hour in rake on average?

Am I actually telling you that the top 10% of $3-6 limit players are actually LOSING $14 an hour in the long run, even though they are beating the game!

You’re damn right that’s what I’m telling you.  Look it up.

By the time most players get good enough to beat a limit game at the rate of 1BB/hr, they are savvy enough to know that it’s still impossible to beat the rake.  So, they do one of three things:

First, they may study books, videos and magazines in an attempt to get better and beat the rake at an even higher rate. This is something that everybody tries, but very few succeed at if they are already in the top 10% of players at their level.

Second:  They take their game up to a higher limit, say $20-$40 or even $30-$60.  This, of course, dramatically raises their volatility and puts their bankroll at risk.

Third:  They may TRY to find a home game that doesn’t take a rake.  Pfffftt!  Good luck with that.  For reasons I describe in my upcoming eBook, the “Home Poker Profits” Cash Game System, those kinds of games almost don’t exist.  To summarize, if you are lucky enough to manage to find one and get invited, it will be for very small stakes, and, more importantly, the game itself almost certainly won’t be around for very long.

For the top 1% of players, those who are good enough to not only beat the rake but also have the discipline and bankroll management skills to play in the higher stakes games and not go bust, there is a pretty good living to be made from poker…even if it is a total freakin’ grind (trust me, I know).

Unfortunately for them, most players think that the only way to make more money from poker is to get better at actually playing poker.  They are thinking like a wage-earning employee who just hopes to get a small raise when they should be thinking like the business owner who wants to massively increase profits.

The problem is this…the vast majority of players have not yet learned the ONE MAJOR SECRET that every casino and a few savvy players already know…the secret that will allow them to turn the tables and take power away from the casinos and put it back where it belongs…IN THE HANDS OF THE PLAYERS!

Oh yeah, did I mention that they will be paid handsomely for their trouble?

After all, It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at these figures and realize that there is an VERY LARGE pie out there being split up among a VERY SMALL group of casinos and websites.  You saw how one LA Casino is making $$131,000,000 a year just from poker?

In my next FREE REPORT, I’ll take a HUGE risk by divulging that secret to you!!!

FREE REPORT 1: THE TWO AMAZING SECRETS THAT CASINOS HOPE YOU’LL NEVER DISCOVER!

Most of us still think that Casinos make their money from us at the slots, craps, and blackjack, and tables.  It’s the profits from those games that finance the new multi-billion dollar Las Vegas Casino Projects we see announced on weekly basis…right?

That may be true…if the boundaries of your universe extend only to the Las Vegas City limits.

You see, through clever marketing campaigns, the Las Vegas Casino Cartel has led us to believe that the poker room is no more than a loss leader for the rest of the casino.  In other words, they actually think they can convince us that the only reason their poker room exists is so that the dutiful husband can stay occupied while his wife loses their mortgage check at the slots.

I’ve made it a point to talk with poker room managers in several major Vegas casinos, and I’ve always heard the same fairy tale story:

“Our poker room actually loses money every year.”

“We’re only here so that the husbands can be occupied while the wives enjoy themselves with the slots”

“The casino only hosts poker because that’s what our customers have asked for, but we don’t actually make money from it”

GIVE…ME…A…FREAKIN…BREAK!

These are the smoothest, slickest, most business savvy con men to ever walk the earth.  Now, they are running their con game on us at the highest level.

Time for common sense check #1:  Would the kind of guys who have made BILLIONS from our ignorance do ANYTHING for free, much less at a LOSS?

I didn’t think so.

But the undeniable fact is that there are NUMEROUS casinos, particularly in the Los Angeles area, that make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars every year exclusively from HOSTING POKER GAMES!

And I’m not talking about the high-stakes, high-roller type of games we see on TV.  I’m talking about the average, low stakes, limit and no-limit games that we are all used to.

Here comes Common Sense Check #2:  Can legitimate, multi billion dollar casinos (such as the Commerce Casino in LA…which from the outside looks absolutely GORGEOUS and hosts great tournaments) be built based on a business activity that is a break even proposition at best and a money loser the rest of the time??

Once again, I didn’t think so!

If you don’t believe me, let me break it down for you.

-The Commerce Casino has thousands of square feet of space devoted to “table games” like pai-gow, “California 21 (blackjack)”, and Super 8, to name a few.  (By the way, According to California Law “Cardrooms” like “The Commerce” aren’t allowed to make a percentage profit on these games like the Vegas casinos do.  Instead, independent “bankers” make all the big profits…the casino just takes a small fixed rake per hand)

-AT THE SAME TIME, The Commerce has more than 10 times the square feet devoted solely to poker cash games and tournaments!!! That’s over 80% of their available space!!!

Common Sense Check #3:  If you were a business owner, would you devote 80% of your income producing floor space to your lowest cash producing activity, or to your highest cash producing activity?

If you’ve made it this far, you don’t need me to answer that question, do you?

So to recap:

1.        Casinos everywhere, particularly in Los Angeles, go out of their way to make us believe that hosting poker is not a very big income producer…that the real money is made at the table games.

2.       At the same time, they devote a LARGE MAJORITY of their floor space to those very same activities that they claim lose money.

What’s the only conclusion that we can draw from this?  Is it that these huge businesses are basically operating as charitable organizations to provide us poker players a place to find a game?

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you at a really great price!

Obviously that’s not true.  The real truth is this: The casinos have two carefully guarded secrets that they are fighting tooth and nail to keep secret.

Secret #1: Hosting poker is a HIGHLY PROFITABLE business, even at low stakes.

Now, a little common sense told us this already, right?  Its kind of an “open secret”

But in my next Free Report, I go into detail on exactly HOW MUCH PROFIT the casinos are actually making from hosting poker…and believe me, it’s a LOT.

After that, I’ll tell you the REAL SECRET that the casinos don’t want anybody to find out.

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