The tradition of casino cages issuing limited-edition commemorative souvenir chips for Chinese New Year -- often with special "lucky" $8 denomination examples -- is a long one that we've covered in this column almost since its inception. Back in 2006, the lineup of participating casinos read as follows: Bally's; Four Queens; Harrah's, Las Vegas Hilton, Palms, Paris, Rio, Wynn. In subsequent years, Venetian/Palazzo also became a regular, with Bellagio, MGM Grand, Caesars, and M Resort also entering the fray, although Four Queens dropped off the radar a few years back.
All remained pretty much the same through the recent Years of the Dog, Pig, Rabbit, and Dragon, until 2013. Enter the Year of the Snake, and something went awry in chipland, for which we fear we may be partly -- if entirely inadvertently -- responsible. Allow us to quote from last year's annual "Chinese New Year chip" QoD (which ran 1/29/13, in response to a query received asking, "Do you have any information for this year's Chinese New Year of the Snake on whether and what casinos will be issuing commemorative CNY poker chips and when? We started our collection several years ago and have been using your column as a very helpful guide. When we inquired at the Palms last week, the cashier said she did not think the hotel was issuing chips this year because of some law prohibiting the sale of poker chips. We are hoping this is incorrect as they have been putting out one of the best collections.):
This has almost become an annual QoD tradition, as you allude to, and generally involves a little googling and calling around to some 20-or-so casino cages to find out if they will be issuing commemorative chips, almost always in the denomination of "lucky" Asian number eight (some used to issue $5 and $25 chips, too, but that seems to be a thing of the past), to celebrate the Chinese New Year. What could be simpler? Not so this year.
We started out, as we normally do, by calling all the usual suspects, and the first hurdle we encountered was the discovery that even at this late juncture, our calls were a little premature, despite Chinese New Year falling on Feb. 10 this year, which is less than two weeks away. Some casino cages we contacted had not yet received any word one way or the other, or weren't entirely sure when the chips would be in-house and available. Nevertheless, we were able to get what seemed to be solid information from most of the relevant properties and were progressing with our research when things got weird.
The bad news, off the bat, is that the Palms will not be issuing any Year of the Snake chips, which is odd, since they always have in the past ... often in more than one denomination. The chips issued for Chinese New Year aren't ever poker chips (which are different to those used for other table games), so that part of the response you received doesn't make sense. However, it is against the terms of Regulation 12, which governs the use of chips and tokens, to sell a casino chip as a souvenir, although all the casinos that issue these commemorative chips all sell them at the cage, in mint condition, without the chips ever having been in play in the casino, which is a definite no-no. According to the letter of the law, a chip is and remains the property of the casino that issued it and should never leave that property, although of course, they do all the time.
So, this is where we started to get curious as to whether the powers that be (i.e., the Gaming Control Board) had started to clamp down on this harmless if outlawed practice, a theory which started to gather some momentum as we dug around on some chip-collector message boards, where we read vague accounts of casinos like the Palms and M Resort suddenly changing their minds about issuing collectibles for Chinese New Year this time. (With its recent $1 million fine presumably still stinging, who can blame the Palms for opting to stick within the letter of the law?)
Meanwhile, another site called Marlow Chips, which deals in collectibles, has this emphatic statement posted: "There will be no chips released by Palms, M Resort or any of the Harrah's [sic] properties this year, as those were all turned down by the Gaming Control Board. As of now, only 8 casinos will release chips, as below, including for the very first time, a Hard Rock $8."
While our calls confirmed what was stated about the Palms and M opting out this year, although they did not reveal the reason(s) why, several Caesars Entertainment (formerly Harrah's) properties confirmed that they would have $8 chips, including Bally's, Harrah's, and the Rio. Caesars Palace wasn't sure as yet. (Bally's also let on that they still have some chips left over from previous Years of the Rabbit, Pig, and Dragon, if anyone's interested.) There's much buzz online about the rumored Hard Rock chip, but the cage there said it still wasn't confirmed if they'd be having them or not. (Even if a casino issues them, sometimes they are distributed exclusively to high rollers, mainly Asian customers here to celebrate, and there may not be any made available to the general public.)
We then hopped over to thechipboard.com, a big message board for collectors, but all we found was a post by an employee of an undisclosed casino, who wrote: "Have you heard if anyone is going through with their Chinese New Year chip this year? After GCB came down with the new changes that they are intent on enforcing, a lot canceled their orders. Our rep said 8 casinos, including us (and ours was really cool), canceled. I forgot to ask him if that was everyone or not."
The plot was thickening, so we did what we always do in these kinds of situations, and placed a call to the Chief (i.e., Jerry Markling, who heads up the Enforcement Division at the Gaming Control Board). He put us straight on a number of things, including the fact that no casino this year had been "turned down" for approval by the GCB, contrary to that first report we read, and the only reason they might ever be was if the chips they proposed issuing violated the pretty strict rules about what's permitted in terms of dimensions, patterns, and so on.
Jerry Markling had no knowledge of any agents out there actively enforcing Regulation 12, but then again he seemed surprised when we informed him that a whole bunch of casinos sell these chips each Chinese New Year, often limiting the purchase to three per customer. This is absolutely against the terms of the regulation, which rules that chips have no cash value and cannot be used for any purpose other than to represent the amount that the player bought in for. It's not permitted for casinos to sell live chips as souvenirs, and it would appear that someone has started enforcing this rule, although the order evidently didn't come from the top.
While the mystery remains unsolved, we placed some more direct calls to cages around town, and as far as we know, have compiled a complete list of casinos that will be issuing Year of the Snake chips, either on Feb. 10 or 11, and often in pretty restricted quantities, so get their early if you want to avoid disappointment -- and make sure no one's watching!
Here's that list: Bally's, Bellagio, Encore, Harrah's, MGM Grand, Palace Station, Palazzo, Rio, Wynn, and Venetian.
Aria, Caesars Palace, and the Hard Rock were still unknowns at the time we called. And M Resort and Palms are both definite nos, although as to why, your guess is as good as ours/theirs.
UPDATE: 01-29-2013 Some really interesting and insightful reader feedback:
•"Interesting topic today. Our Table Games director mentioned to me just last week that Gaming is turning down overly complex chip patterns in favor of simple patterns. I'm one of a handful in our casinos that review the patterns for compliance before they're submitted to Gaming, so that's how it came up. I'll try to follow up with him later today to see if he's heard anything else." [Ed: As indicated, this comes from someone on the "inside" who's closely involved with chips and the rules governing them. He responds with more feedback below.]
•"I spoke with our Director of Table Games again, and he said he had heard from his contact at GPI [Ed: This the main company that's responsible for supplying gaming equipment, from chips to crap tables, to multiple casinos worldwide] that Gaming wanted casinos to tone down the sexy-women images, rather than it being an issue of design complexity. You may want to contact someone at GPI to hear what their views are of today's QOD, as they manufacture the chips and are pretty aware of what Gaming is looking for." [Ed: As soon as time permits, we will certainly pursue this. We can't imagine any of the casinos that canceled their chip orders were using sexy images for the Year of the Snake, unless they'd opted for some inappropriate Garden of Eden theme! Again, Gaming Control told us no chip designs had been turned down by them, so it must be GPI putting the screws on. We will investigate...]
On a different note, another reader wrote in to make the following point (essentially a matter of semantics]:
•"The casino does not "sell" the chips at the cage. It allows you to "buy in," the fact that you never cash out with those chips is your choice. If they were to put a premium on the chip, allow you to buy-in for $15 and only give you an $8 chip, that would be selling it. "With about a $.20 cost on the chip itself, allowing you to buy-in for $8 and never cash it out is a big enough profit margin, even for Las Vegas..." [Ed: This is factually correct, of course but the manner in which these chips tend to be promoted -- announcing a specific date, down to the time of day, when these chips will be made available, and limiting the quantity an individual patron may purchase (often three), is not the usual MO at the casino cage.]
So that's how we left off last year. Fast forward to 2014 and we posted on the ever-helpful ccgtcc.com site for an insider's update, where we were leared that, "NV Gaming turned down live-action $8 chips this year. A few casinos are making NCV $8 chips to give away."
We looked up Gaming Control records for reports of new chip designs being approved, and found that back in July, Venetian/Palazzo had designs approved for NCV ["No Cash Value"] numeral 8 baccarat Year of the Horse chips, as did Gold Coast, the following month, for 25 and 100 numeral NCV chips. In October of last year, Wynn receive GCB approval for actual $1-value Year of the Horse chips and these will go "on sale" [see above note for a breakdown of the relevant semantics] at the casino cage at one minute past midnight on February 1 (we were told this direct from the horse's mouth, so to speak).
From some calls placed, we gained confirmation that when it comes to Cosmo and Venetian, preferred players may be issued with souvenir chips this year, but Joe Public cannot purchase these at the cage. We will pursue this topic in the course of the next few days, since Gold Coast had no knowledge of what we were talking about, in spite of having had some chip designs approved, and we still would like to get an official statement from Gaming Control as to any change in policy. Still, as of time of this writing, it sounds like the only place to get Chinese New Year chips for the Year of the Horse will be the cage at Wynn, and only in $1 denomination, not the usual "lucky" 8s. We recommend you line up early to avoid disappointment.
