I received my samples of the "Pirate Gold Poker Chips" a couple of weeks ago and figured that I might as well post my thoughts on them. Just as I had predicted I think their cons outweigh their pros, I believe they'd be somewhat impractical to use during an actual game of poker, and so overall I'm not a huge fan.
As shown in the attached picture there are only 4 different coins or chips in this set which the manufacturer refers to as gold, silver, copper, and gunmetal. All of them are the standard poker chip size of 39 mm in diameter so they should fit in most chip racks or cases just fine. But at 2.5 mm thick these are noticeably thinner than typical chips which are 3.5 mm thick. I would therefore expect that each row in a rack should probably hold about 27-28 of these pirate chips rather than the typical 20 chip barrel that fits in a row with more "normal" chips. The copper and gunmetal chips both have holes in the center and weigh about 13 grams each, whereas the gold and silver chips do not have any hole and are therefore a bit heavier at approximately 15.6 grams each. And very importantly, please note that there are no denomination markings on any of the four chips, which could be seen as either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference. Just speaking personally, I tend to prefer chips that do have denominations clearly marked on them. But I can absolutely understand how chips without denominations might be a bit more versatile and so I won't consider that to be either a pro or a con.
Pros:
1. The chips certainly are "cool" looking. I think they did a pretty good job giving them a pirate/Caribbean/Mayan/Aztec type vibe.
2. They seem well made and since they are metal I'd expect that they will hold up fairly well over time. They do have quite a bit of texture on them though, which makes me wonder if they might get dirty pretty easily. But the good part is if they ever do get dirty then they should be extremely easy to clean with just a bit of dish soap and warm water. Heck, you might even be able to throw these guys in a dishwasher LOL. I mean you certainly don't have to worry about any labels coming off, nor would there be any fear of plastic or clay melting.
Cons:
1. I feel like the single biggest problem with these chips is that the four different types all look fairly similar to one another. There are the copper and gunmetal chips that have holes in the center, and then there are the gold and silver chips that have skulls in the center. But other than that they are basically all the exact same design. Yes they are technically four different colors, that's true of course. But those four colors aren't really radically different from each other like say white, red, blue, green, pink, etc. would be. Instead, these four are all fairly muted metallic colors and unfortunately they kind of all blend together in low lighting situations such that the two chips with holes become easy to mistake for each other and the two chips with skulls become easy to mistake for each other. I mean there is a darn good reason that standard poker sets differentiate between their various chips in multiple ways by coming in different colors, having differing edgespots, having denominations printed on them, and sometimes even having different artwork and/or label shapes on each chip (like Pharaoh's chips). But with these pirate chips it's really just center hole versus center skull and slightly different colors of metal. So if someone splashes the pot and chips go everywhere then you are going to have to pay very close attention to figure out what stakes are on the table.
2. Speaking of splashing the pot, these pirate chips are loud. Just tapping two of them together gives off a high pitched metallic clinking sound, so I can only imagine how annoyingly raucous it would be if someone truly did sprinkle a pot with dozens of these or if someone's stack accidentally got knocked over. Granted you might normally like the sound of coins clinking together... I know I do. But I think the noise will get pretty darn abrasive during a game going 3, 4, 5 hours or even longer.
3. Having just four different chip denominations kind of limits what you can do with them. Yes it should be enough for most basic tournament games. But you aren't going to have a ton of options when it comes to things like multiple color-ups or deep starting stacks. And the basic set comes with only 300 chips, so you'd need to purchase extra chips or multiple sets if you plan to have any type of cash game or offer tourney rebuys.
4. At about $0.93 per chip these pirate chips are certainly not cheap. In fact, as far as I'm aware that price point actually makes them more expensive than virtually everything other than Paulsons and CPC.
5. I know they advertise the heaviness of these pirate chips as being a pro, but I think most of us would agree that it's really a con. I mean casinos tend to know what they are doing when it comes to gaming, and if they have almost universally settled on chips weighing about 10 grams then there's probably a damn good reason for that decision. But by my math a set of 300 of these pirate chips likely weighs in at over 9 pounds, versus just 6.6 pounds for the same number of standard 10 gram chips. So if you have to travel around with your poker supplies at all then you are absolutely going to need to buy a heavy duty case like an Apache, Nanuk, or Pelican because any of the cheap cases available on Amazon will almost assuredly bust wide open with these hefty guys weighing it down.
When all is said and done I think the idea of a pirate treasure themed poker set is cool, so props to the creators for coming up with a solid concept. But the sad reality is that they made some fairly obvious mistakes in the design process that will negatively impact most people's enjoyment during actual gameplay. Ideally they really should have consulted with experts like the fine folks here at PCF to help avoid some of those mistakes from the get go. Or if anyone from the manufacturer ever stumbles across this site in the future and is open to constructive feedback then I really believe that we'd be able to collectively help them improve the product to the point that it might become great. But in the meantime I don't think I could ever justify purchasing a full set of these pirate chips unless I had $300.00 seriously just burning a hole in my pocket and absolutely nothing better to splurge on instead.
