The movie Rounders is widely considered as the catalyst for the worldwide popularity of poker. Many poker players regard it as the singular spark that ignited their passion in the game. It’s faithfulness to the true essence of poker has made it a central icon in the poker culture. There is no other movie more frequently quoted around a poker table.

In the movie the main protagonist, Mike, plays at an underground illegal poker room run by Teddy KGB. For the poker chips Miramax enlisted the help of chip manufacturer PCOL, with the condition that they never replicate the chips for commercial sale. With the Rounders garnering such widespread popularity, PCOL have been asked many times to create replica or tribute chips. Every time, they have honoured their original agreement with Miramax and politely refused.

Below are some screen captures from the movie:

Recently I was lucky enough to make contact with a group of people who were able to create a design that was based on the original Teddy KGB chip, but had enough differences to allow them to be produced by PCOL. The chips are made of exactly the same materials and colours, but intentionally differ by using the horse head mould (instead of roman), a colour bear (instead of grey), and grey denominations (instead of red). It’s the closest any one has got to the original chips from the movie, and I’m stoked to be one of only a handful of people in the world to own a set.

For all those of you who are interested in poker chips, here’s four brief pieces of advice.

• Official casino weight is not 11.5 grams as eBay would have you believe. Casino poker chips are actually vary from 8 to 10 grams depending on the manufacturer and casino.

• There’s no such thing as composite clay. Composite clay is just plastic, not clay. The only mainstream companies making casino-quality plastic chips are Bud Jones and Matsui.

• You can gauge the quality of chips by how high you can stack them. Good quality chips should be able to create stacks at least 50 high, and the stack shouldn’t spin or wobble excessively.

• It helps you and your players if the denominations are consistent with the commonly used and widely accepted chip colours:

$0.25 – pink
$1 – blue or white
$5 – red
$25 – green
$100 – black
$500 – purple
$1,000 – yellow

PS: For those not familiar with poker terminology, a “rounder” is a semi-pro or professional player who makes a living or a significant amount of their income from playing poker.