Buying Chips

Buying chips is an obvious requirement of live poker, but there is absolutely nothing complicated about it. All that you need to do in order to get some chips to play with is make a visit to the cage (cashier) when you get to the room.

In some poker rooms, you will be allowed to bring cash right to the table and have the dealer provide chips for you. However, the majority of brick and mortar rooms will either require that all or at least initial chip buys be made at the cashier. This is to prevent the dealers from needing to keep anything larger than white and red chips in their rack. Plus, buying chips at the table will inevitably slow the game down to one extent or another.

Chip Runners and Floor Guys

If you don’t buy your chips at the cashier itself, the odds are that your poker room will either have what is known as a chip runner or a floor guy to assist you in getting some chips to play with. Chip runners have the lone job of running around the floor and filling up racks for players who need to buy in or would like to re buy. Unfortunately, the role of the chip runner has largely died out and is somewhat of a novelty in the modern day live poker scene. With that said, however, you will find a random room from time to time who still employs an active chip runner.

If you do have someone who’s only job is to get chips for you, the common practice is to leave them a tip of a dollar or two, as they get paid in much the same way as dealers do. If you get your chips from a common floor guy, however, there is no need to leave a tip. In fact, most floor guys are not actually supposed to accept tips.

This article was written by Jonathan Wanchalk.