Learn to Wager on Craps – Tricks and Schemes: Casino Chips or Casino Cheques?
Casino personnel normally allude to chips as "cheques," being of French ancestry. In reality, there’s a difference between a chip and a cheque. A cheque is a chip with a amount written on it and is always valued at the value of the written amount. Chips, although, do not have values printed on them and any color can be worth any dollar value as determined by the casino. e.g., in a poker tournament, the croupier may define white chips as 1 dollar and blue chips as $10; while, in a roulette game, the casino may state that white chips as 25 cents and blue chips as 2 dollars. An additional example, the cheap red, white, and blue plastic chips you purchase at Target for your weekend poker game are known as "chips" seeing as they don’t have denominations written on them.
When you put your $$$$ down on the craps table and hear the dealer say, "Cheque change only," she’s merely advising the boxman that a new individual would like to change cash for chips (cheques), and that the $$$$$ on the table isn’t part of the action. $$$$$$ plays in most casinos, so if you place a 5 dollar bill on the Pass Line just prior to the hurler tossing the dice and the croupier doesn’t trade your cash for chips, your money is "part of the action." When the croupier announces, "Cheque change only," the boxman knows that your $$$$$ isn’t in play.
Technically, in live craps games, we bet with cheques, not chips. Occasionally, a gambler will walk up to the the table, drop a one hundred dollar cheque, and tell the croupier, "Cheque change." It is fun to act like a newbie and say to the dealer, "Hey, I’m new to this game, what’s a cheque?" Most of the time, their comical answers will entertain you.