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Poker Chips

Casino tokens (also known as chips, checks or cheques) are small discs used in lieu of currency in casinos. Colored metal or compression molded clay tokens of various denominations are used primarily in table games, as opposed to metal token coins, used primarily in slot machines.

Some casinos also use gaming plaques for high stakes table games ($25,000 and above). Plaques differ from chips in that they are larger, usually rectangular in shape and contain serial numbers.

Although the first gambling house was legalised in Venice in 1626, actual poker chips as we know them now were still not used for over two hundred more years. Back in the 1800s and prior, poker players seemed to use any small valuable object imaginable. Early poker players sometimes used jagged gold pieces, gold nuggets, gold dust, or coins as well as “chips” primarily made of ivory, bone, wood, paper and a composition made from clay and shellac. Several companies between the 1880s and the late 1930s made clay composition poker chips. There were over 1000 designs from which to choose.

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The very first British Poker Open (BPO) was held in London in April 2005. The BPO was an all-new tournament, devised by Crispin and James who wanted to produce a poker tournament that raised the bar on poker interest within the UK, and whose occurrence coincided with the launch of The Poker Channel itself. The tournament would run for close to a month between April & May and would have a prize pool of over 200,000 pounds - and on top of this, the heats and final would be filmed & broadcast live making the BPO the UK’s biggest live televised poker event in history.

What the BPO lured top players over from the US whom had not played in the UK before, such as the current World Poker Champion Greg Raymer, Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey and Howard Lederer and this in turn brought the BPO further exposure.

The inaugural BPO was eventually won by Adam Dujmovic, a semi-professional from Chicago whom after qualifying for the tournament online, collected a prize just shy of 100,000 pounds.

The success of the BPO 2005 inevitably bought along the BPO 2006 a year later. The 2006 version had a pot of 100,000 pounds to be won over 6 heats and a final. Noah Boeken collected around 56,000 pounds.

Online poker, along with televised poker, really propelled the game into its huge growth phase. Online poker sites are generally connected with one or more online poker payment services which can be used to fund player accounts with money with which to play poker.

Most online poker sites are members of poker networks. Although each site has their own poker room and often their own bonuses and promotions, all of the poker rooms are part of the same network. When a player logs into one poker room, he or she is actually playing with people who have logged in from any poker rooms on the network. This network sharing increases the number of active players on each poker room, giving the player more game selection at any time of the day.

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