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Deal Me In: Don’t Walk Away Renee

2 August 2013

Dear Mark: I was playing roulette, and because I was going to return after a quick bathroom break, I took my remaining 20 $5 chips with me. I then got sidetracked by a couple "paying" slot machines, then went to dinner. After a few hours, I went to the cashier’s cage to cash the chips in and was told they don’t take roulette chips, and that I must exchange them for casino chips on the roulette table where I was playing. When I laid my chips and asked to change them into casino chips, the dealer said she could only replace them at the table minimum price of $1 per chip. I complained to the pit boss, but to no avail. Was this some sort of collusion between the cashier’s cage and the roulette table to pay me only the minimum amount? Renee S.

When you buy into a roulette game, you are given your own color of chips for your present stay at the table. The use of separate roulette table chips of various colors is to distinguish the different players on the game. You also designate the chips’ worth when you buy in. For instance, you more than likely gave the dealer $100 for 20 green chips, which consigns them a value of $5 apiece.

Your problem, Renee, was that each colored chip will have several different values over the course of the day depending on the per-chip price the player paid. The cashier would have no way of knowing their value during your table stay so your roulette chips would have no real worth at the cage. The cashier was correct in sending you back to the roulette table where you had been playing.

Another issue was that a missing stack of 20 chips can easily go unnoticed. On a jam-up game, the dealer could have overlooked that the table was short one stack, out of 20 stacks, of 20 green chips. Had it been any number other than the standard stack of 20, the dealer probably would have caught it.

Your gambling timeline also became a factor. A change of dealers, swap of a pit boss or two, or a change of shifts, and you fell through the cracks.

It could have also played out that the dealer noticed she was short a stack, told the pit boss that 20 green chips are out with a value of $5. The pit boss would have made note of it at the pit stand, so upon your return, your chips would have been redeemed at full value. She didn’t, so the casino looks at this exchange as someone buying something on sale, then returning it to the store for full value.

One solution could have been to roll the proverbial tape. Observation could have been recording that game, and if given an approximate time of your buy-in, they should have been able to observe your initial transaction. I am a bit surprised it wasn’t suggested as a resolution. To keep you as a satisfied returning customer, that would have been my course of action playing pit bull.

What your transaction was not, is some grand conspiracy between the cashier’s cage in cahoots with a table games supervisor. The simple lesson here is don’t Walk Away Renee (Left Banke, 1966) without having the dealer exchange your roulette chips for regular casino chips.

Gambling Wisdom of the Week: “The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.” – Bernard Shaw
Mark Pilarski

As a recognized authority on casino gambling, Mark Pilarski survived 18 years in the casino trenches, working for seven different casinos. Mark now writes a nationally syndicated gambling column, is a university lecturer, author, reviewer and contributing editor for numerous gaming periodicals, and is the creator of the best-selling, award-winning audiocassette series on casino gambling, Hooked on Winning.
Mark Pilarski
As a recognized authority on casino gambling, Mark Pilarski survived 18 years in the casino trenches, working for seven different casinos. Mark now writes a nationally syndicated gambling column, is a university lecturer, author, reviewer and contributing editor for numerous gaming periodicals, and is the creator of the best-selling, award-winning audiocassette series on casino gambling, Hooked on Winning.