Using a chip rack to count poker chips
Last week, we showed you the basics of how to count poker chips. This week, we’ll show you how to use a chip rack to help count large amounts of chips.
Chip racks (sometimes called chip trays) are designed for standard casino chips. Most 11.5g composite and clay chips will fit in these racks. They are made of clear acrylic and can be found at many online retailers—Amazon has several offers of a ten-pack for $12 to $14.
If your chips are the same thickness as a standard chip, each tube of the rack will accommodate exactly 20 chips. Since a standard rack has five tubes, that means a full rack will contain 100 chips. So, if you have a large number of chips, just create a 20-chip rack stack (break it down as described last week to verify that it contains 20 chips) and use it to size into your remaining chips. When you create five big 20-chip stacks, you know you have 100 chips, a full rack.
What about when you’re getting the chips out of the rack? How do you verify that the rack contains 100 chips? One way is to actually get the chips out of the rack, verify that the five stacks are even, and break one down to show that each stack contains 20 chips, but there’s an easier method. All you have to do it remove one chip from one of the end tubes, and then run it along the length of the rack, pushing it against the chips, as shown in the picture. If any of the tubes contain only 19 chips, the chip will naturally fall into the tube.
One word of caution: the first time you put your chips in a rack, make sure that it does, in fact, hold exactly 100 chips. Particularly thin or thick (nonstandard) chips may fit 95 or 105 chips to a rack.
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Thanks for posting this useful tip. Much appreciated.