Here in Tucson it is called musical poker rooms. In the beginning, poker was first offered at the Casino of the Sun. Later, the Desert Diamond opened a poker room. It was immediately favored over the Casino of the Sun because it had better ventilation and was closer to town than the Sun. After a while, the Sun closed their poker room.

Then both the Sun and Desert Diamond Tribes decided to build modern, resort facilities. Neither would abandon their older facilities, but instead would build anew, and both would be even further away from town.

The Desert Diamond was first to open and they kept the same name for their new casino resort (Desert Diamond). They closed the poker room at the old location and re-opened it at the new location.

Then the Casino of the Sun Tribe completed their new facility and named it Casino Del Sol. At that facility they opened a poker room. It soon was somewhat competitive to the Desert Diamond poker room, as the Diamond was now further away, if only by a little bit.

Well, that little bit is very important because the Desert Diamond has decided to move the poker room back to the original property, but in a new building. That new building (a modular structure) will be for poker only and will be no smoking. No slot machines, no blackjack, no BINGO, just poker. It will be moved this August.

Even though the Casino Del Sol just doubled the size of their casino space and doubled the size of their poker room, I would bet that most players will favor the Desert Diamond's new location, or return to the older place.

Anyway, I played in a tournamemnt game this past weekend and although I did not win, I learned the current rankings of their NCV chips, as follows:

When you buy-in to the game, you may also contribute to a dealer's tip pool by paying and extra $3 and getting the "DD" chip. When you sit down to play, the "DD" chip gets traded in for $500 in extra NCV chips.

The Tournament game uses these chips, in the noted denominations:

$25.00

$100.00

$500.00

A special purpose Re-Buy chip. This was purchased from chip runners and were then immediately handed to the dealer in trade for a $1,000 NCV.

$1,000

$5,000.00
These chips were once used for practice play and now are hard to get because they represent $5,000 in tournamemnt play.

As for the

In this tournament it was not being used as a $5 chip (like it once was, or may be used in other tournamemnt play). Instead they were used to count the number of Add-Ons bought. The yellow chip represented the number of re-buys and the reds represented the number of add-ons, but neither were used in actual play, and players never even touched the red ones.

Interesting.

Jim Follis