VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Tipping with Casino Chips is Allowed

Posted on: March 10, 2025, 08:03h. 

Last updated on: March 11, 2025, 10:05h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

• It’s illegal to tip dealers in Nevada using casino chips
• The law was designed to bring the state into line with federal laws regarding the creation of new currencies
• Despite the law’s existence, players still regularly violate it without penalty

This one ends up surprising most Vegas visitors, even ones who have been gambling here for decades, but tipping your dealer or server in casino chips violates state law.

It’s a law no player has ever been arrested for violating. However, taking care of a casino employee with chips could get them in trouble if they’re already being watched for some other infraction.

Most don’t mind taking the chance, though. It’s better than having to say: “I’m sorry, I can’t take chips. Would you mind running to the casino ATM and paying a $10 service fee to get me cash instead?”

And that’s why most gamblers operate under the misconception that it’s allowed.

Token of My Appreciation

It’s all laid out in Paragraph 12.060 of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board’s (NGCB) regulation governing casino chips and tokens: “A licensee shall not accept chips or tokens as payment for any goods or services offered at the licensee’s gaming establishment, with the exception of the specific use for which the chips or tokens were issued.”

Those uses include gambling with the chips, or cashing them in at the same casino where you won or purchased them.

Period.

One clever, and fun, way around this law — with dealers at least — is to ask if they’d like you to place a bet on their behalf before you leave the table to cash in your stack.

Most will entertain the offer since it will make their shift more entertaining.

Place the dealer bet outside your playing circle, but not on top of your chips, and be sure to return with any cash you won.

This Just Doesn’t Stack Up!

The reason for the confusion is that casinos in most other states allow tipping with chips. Also, this wasn’t the law in Nevada prior to 1980. Back then, chips from any Nevada casino were legal tender everywhere in the state.

They were as good as cash when it came to paying for a shrimp cocktail at the Golden Gate, your weekly groceries, or even a church donation.

Most importantly, it helps curb the passing of counterfeit, stolen, or misappropriated chips. This became a real problem with the advent of higher-dollar chips in the late ’70s.

Today, casino chips in Nevada are prohibited to use “for any monetary purpose,” according to the same state gaming regulation. All casinos post signs informing gamblers of this law, but most go unnoticed or unheeded.

Chips aren’t legal tender, but merely symbolic representations of debts. They’re more like round and colorful IOUs than Benjamins. And, as such, they remain the physical property of the casino, not you.

That means you’re not free to assign the casino’s debt to your cab driver, to the stripper at the bad gentlemen’s club that your cab driver received a kickback for driving you to, or to the dirtbag you bought roofies from while trying to recreate “The Hangover” with your friends.

Bargaining Chip

You’re also not free to use them to settle debts, as Nolan Dalla discovered, the hard way, in 2008.

Dalla is no casino novice. He’s a full-time sports better and writer, and the former media director for the World Series of Poker. He didn’t figure it would be a big deal to accept a $5,000 chip from a poker buddy who owed him that amount.

He figured wrong.

“I am out $5,000 to this day,” Dalla told Casino.org.

When he approached the cage at the MGM Grand, Dalla explained, the cashier asked whether he purchased or won the chip there. When Dalla replied that he was given it by a friend, this triggered a supervisor to immediately take over the conversation.

The questions he asked spurred Dalla to phone the friend who gave him the chip. That friend told the supervisor that he received the chip from a third gambler to settle another debt.

Not only did the supervisor refuse to cash in the chip, according to Dalla, he confiscated it from him.

“My most shocking disappointment was how uncooperative the Nevada Gaming Board was about this,” Dalla said. “Despite their public pronouncement that cases of fraud require the casino to provide evidence that the chip was obtained illegally, the board could not have been less helpful to me.”

Can You Even Sell Chips on eBay?

Yes. Selling casino chips online doesn’t break the law quoted above. That’s as long as their value stems from their rarity and collectability, not their value as currency, which is almost always the case.

No one purchases casino chips on eBay to exchange for goods and services, only to collect and invest in. And casinos love when they do that, because whenever one of their IOUs gets collected instead of cashed in, it gets taken out of circulation for decades — perhaps even until after the casino goes out of business. And casinos directly profit from never having to redeem that IOU.

However, if you list a modern $1,000 chip for sale, from a casino that’s still in business, and you ask around $1,000 for it because it has very little collectible value, then the casino could complain and force eBay to remove your listing.

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.