Casino employees frequently reference chips as "cheques," which has its origins in France. In reality, there is a difference between a chip and a cheque. A cheque is a chip with a denomination printed on it and is forever worth the amount of the written value. Chips, on the other hand, don’t have values imprinted on them and the value is defined by the casino. For instance, in a poker table, the dealer may value white chips as one dollar and blue chips as 10 dollars; at the same time, in a roulette game, the croupier might define white chips as $0.25 and blue chips as $2. A different example, the cheap red, white, and blue plastic chips you purchase at Wal-Mart for your Friday-night poker game are called "chips" due to the fact that they don’t have values written on them.
When you put your cash on the table and hear the dealer say, "Cheque change only," he’s just telling the boxman that a new bettor wants to exchange money for chips or more correctly cheques, and that the cash on the table isn’t in play. Money plays in most casinos, so if you put a $5 bill on the Pass Line just before the player tosses the ivories and the dealer doesn’t exchange your cash for chips, your money is "live" and "in play."
In reality, in live craps games, we bet with with cheques, and not chips. Every now and then, a player will walk up to the the table, drop a $100 cheque, and instruct the croupier, "Cheque change." It’s a blast to act like an amateur and ask the croupier, "Hey, I’m a beginner to this game, what’s a cheque?" Most of the time, their wacky responses will entertain you.
