Following on from my report of chipping in London a couple of months ago, this report comes from the English South Coast resort of Brighton, home to four casinos. Having found ourselves with a 2 day break (thank heavens for grandparents who love to babysit!), my wife and I headed down to Brighton in unseasonally good weather. We arrived Sunday evening, and decided to head into the Grosvenor Casino in Hove (a suburb of Brighton, or maybe a separate town depending on who you ask!) before we booked into our hotel. Arriving at 6 pm on a Sunday, we found this small casino quiet even by English standards. Just one roulette, one blackjack and one Casino (Caribbean) poker table open. We settled on the poker table, as I could buy plenty of £1 chips for the progressive light, although the dealer may have wondered where 1/3 of his £1 chips had gone by the time we left! The Grosvenor in Hove is an ex-Pleasurama casino and still uses plenty of their chips along with foil centred Grosvenor Clubs chips (see the scan). A total of 3 different £1 chips and 3 different £5 chips was a good start. Only the £5 Grosvenor Clubs chip was new for my collection, but plenty of traders! Unfortunately the games were not being good to us, so we left somewhat down after about an hour!

Into Brighton, check-in at the hotel and dinner, and then a short walk from our seafront hotel to the Brighton International Casino Club later that evening. Until recently a privately owned club, the ICC has been taken over by Stanley Casinos who seem to be on a mission to buy every private casino outside of London – at the last count, there are only 5 left now! Unfortunately, despite the grand name and change of ownership, this is not a casino I can see myself visiting again (well, ok, maybe if the chips change!). On entering, we found ourselves in a tiny area with some slots (maybe 10), 2 casino poker tables and a bar! We figured as we like to play poker anyway, we’d have a few hands and try and find out where the rest of the casino was! Stanley have already changed the chips to their own, although as with a number of the newly acquired casinos, the location is on the chip, so new £1 and £5 chips for the collection. It was really hot in the casino after a while, so we asked where the other tables were, and were pointed to a door (signed toilets and bar!) which led us downstairs to the roulettes and blackjack. Unfortunately there is no air conditioning downstairs, and although this was March in England, it was stiflingly hot, so we decided that would be enough for the evening! Not a casino to search out, unless you want the chips of course!

Next day spent exploring Brighton, until the afternoon when we headed for the newly located (last August) Grosvenor in Brighton, opposite the pier on the seafront. A very nice casino, spacious (by UK standards), clean and even a non-smoking area. It was very quiet (UK casinos only start gaming at 2 pm and we were there at 2:30) with just roulette and casino poker open, although blackjack also opened just after we arrived. They were using Grosvenor generic chips with the clover motive (well, that's what it looks like to me) and so I picked up a couple for traders, but nothing new for the collection. We stayed a while, chatted with the friendly staff and gamblers, but still left £50 down!

The last casino in the area is the Rendezvous, owned by London Clubs International (partners in the ill-fated Alladdin in Vegas!). My suspicions that they would be using the same chips as they do in LCI’s Rendezvous casino in Southend (one of my local casinos) were correct, but as the location appears on the chips, then new chips for the collection. The craps table was closed, so no chance of getting to the 20p chips, but I was pleasantly surprised to find £2.50 tokens in use on the blackjack table, as Southend uses 50p and £1 chips when paying blackjack.

Just to clarify here, several casinos in the UK use £2.50 chips, and several (usually the London casinos) use £2.50 tokens, but these are for use on the blackjack tables only, and there are no slots that use these tokens, so I include them with my chip collection. The Rendezvous in London also uses £2.50 tokens, but of a different design (check out my website for details – www.geocities.com/jdskinner123)

We managed to pick up 3 of these tokens between us, but were still losing when they opened the 3 card poker table. One of our favourite games, so we moved tables and our luck improved – I hit 3 straight flushes in 20 minutes to turn £100 into over £1,000 and so suddenly the trip was showing a nice profit. I moved onto the roulette for a while as they had a 50p stake table, which meant I could cash in an odd amount to pick up some 50p and £1 chips, and so 4 new chips for the collection, and some traders. The Rendezvous is also a new casino, and had a great restaurant where we had a very nice meal using some of our winnings!

And so that was the casinos of Brighton. 7 new chips, lots of traders, a few pens and matchbooks, and a great time coupled with some very nice weather. Brighton is worth visiting if you are in the UK (only 1 hour from London by train or car) and some nice casinos (just avoid the Stanley Brighton ICC!).

Most of the chips below are available as traders for other UK chips, and a couple are also on Ebay.

Happy chipping. Jason