VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Strip Casinos Accept Competitors’ Chips

Posted on: July 28, 2025, 07:21h. 

Last updated on: August 3, 2025, 05:18h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Vegas Myths Busted.
  • It’s true that Las Vegas Strip casinos once accepted chips from competitor properties
  • Like many things in Vegas, that practice has changed — and become obsolete — largely due to gaming and banking regulations
  • Sister properties owned by the same conglomerate (eg, MGM, Caesars) will still accept chips from other properties under the same corporate umbrella

File this myth with an asterisk. Like the $20 room upgrade trick, optional resort fees, and legally tipping with casino chips. a casino accepting a competitor’s chips is something that used to be true, but isn’t anymore. (Yes, tipping with chips — even at the casino that issued them — is now against the law in Nevada. First time reading this column?)

AI’s idea of a casino cage cashier turning down a redemption request for a competitor’s chips. (Image: Copilot)

Nevertheless, at least three nasty comments will be left beneath this story. They will inform us that the posters have gambled in Las Vegas for nearly half a century, and every casino accepts competitors’ chips. And it will conclude by calling us “an idiot” for not getting this correct. (We are an idiot, but for other reasons.)

Where the Chips May Not Fall

All Las Vegas casinos once redeemed competitors’ chips for cash as a convenience extended to their customers. Before 1980, casino chips were treated as legal tender everywhere in Nevada (though they never actually were). Gamblers frequently used them to settle debts or pay cab drivers.

Though no one really noticed the last day, or even year, that a Strip casino cashed out chips from the competition, like the last floppy disk inserted or the last can of Tab opened in the world, it just happened.

The exception to that rule is poker chips, with which casinos were more lenient until earlier this month, when MGM Resorts (which operates four poker rooms), Caesars Entertainment (which operates three), and Wynn Resorts and the Venetian all announced they would no longer cash in competitors’ poker chips as a policy.

There’s never been a regulation preventing casinos from accepting competitors’ chips. By the same token — sorry but we have a problem resisting puns — there’s never been a regulation requiring it. And doing so has become more and more impractical every year since the ‘80s.

Because there has never been a unified system to verify or settle competitor chips, doing so complicates compliance with gaming regulations and IRS reporting requirements, such as tracking transactions for Currency Transaction Reports under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.

It can obscure the source of funds, raising concerns about an old timey-sounding crime that has been brought back into fashion by no less than three Strip casinos (Resorts World, MGM Grand, and Wynn Las Vegas), all of which were fined by Nevada gaming regulators for money laundering in the past year.

Even before those scandals, modern casinos operated under financial controls and standardized procedures strict enough to make cross-casino chip redemption unwise.

Now, the practice is suicidal.

The Exception…

Bellagio cashiers will still exchange your Mandalay Bay chips for cash or Bellagio chips, however, and the same cross-acceptance applies to Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas. And that’s because these casinos aren’t really competitors. They’re sister properties under the same corporate umbrella.

Centralized accounting systems facilitate inter-property chip exchanges. The parent company reconciles liabilities internally, transferring funds between properties and maintaining a clear audit trail. (And you there was no good news about the dominance over the Las Vegas Strip by only two multibillion-dollar corporations?)

To many fans of old Las Vegas, this is yet another example of modern Las Vegas prioritizing its shareholders over its guests.

It’s an oft-repeated story, the mafia treating its guests far better than corporations when it was in control. But it’s a story you never hear told by gamblers who got their hands broken in a back room for card counting.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. Visit VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.