As a surprise present for my birthday yesterday, my wife arranged an overnight babysitter (for parents, you know that that is a welcome present by itself sometimes!) and a stay at the premier 5 star hotel in Cardiff (frequented by Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones apparantly!). Of course the reason behindd the trip was to alow me to visit Cardiff's 3 casinos, including the private Les Croupiers, home to £4 minimums and chips!

After a 4 hour drive down on Saturday, we decided to head straight to Les Croupiers before checking in at the hotel. What we didn't realise was that the casino is located in the middle of Cardiff's nightlife area, and early Saturday evening meant thousands of teenagers trying to get into the many bars in the area - boy, I must be getting old as it just looked so busy to me! We made it to the casino and after showing our ID (still required for new members in the UK) we made it inside. Les Croupiers seems to be in need of some brightening up and seemed a little drab, although the dealers and staff were very friendly.

Les Croupiers has the most unusual selection of chips and tables minimums I have come across! Firstly most tables are £4 minimums and use 2 varieties of £4 chips (see the scan below). However you can also use £5 chips on these tables, but not values in between, so for example, on the 3 card poker which we played first, you can bet £4 or £5, but not £6 or £7. You can bet £8 (2 x £4) but not £9, and so on - £10, £12, £15, £16, £20 are allowed, but not £11, £13, £14, £17, £18 or £19. And you could mix chips in the same hand, so I played £5 on the pair plus, but £4 on the ante (which meant I had a supply of £4 and £5 chips!).

I then spent some cash on the 50p roulette, changing up 25 chips which got me the £10 and a £2 and a 50p chip - an old jockey mold hot stamp.

I needed some of the smaller chips though, so a spell on the £2 blackjack (only until 8pm) meant a few £2 chips, and a blackjack meant I got a £1 (so they could pay me £3). I then played £5 so that, once I hit blackjack I got paid £7.50, which meant I picked up some more 50p chips including the new design chip.

Finally I though I would try and get some more £1 chips, so I though I would try the Caribbean poker with the progressive, so that I would get £1 chips for the progressive and 'liberate' a few. Unfortunately they do not have a £1 progressive - it is only 25p and they use special 25p tokens! Managed to keep one, but obviously no more £1 chips to trade with!

They also had a jockey mold £50 and a new BJ £100 chip, but no £25 chips are used.

Finally, and not sure if you get these in the US in which case this is a comment to the UK collectors, but amongst the snacks offered by the waitresses, I saw one bring out a pot noodle!!!! The didn't allow alcohol on the gaming floor either - although now legal, the pit boss told me that they have so many people in after the clubs and bars close who have alreday had a few drinks, that they prefer to stop any more drinking at the tables.

Finally left after a couple of hours and only about £50 down. Checked in at the hotel (absolutely excellent). We then had a meal and headed off to the newly opened Grosvenor casino in the Atlantic Wharf development with restaurants, bars and cinema.

This was much more like a US style casino (albeit much smaller obviously!) with a couple of bars, live entertainment (Motown - quite good, if a bit loud) and a bright gaming area. The £1 and £5 chips I picked up are similar to those used in several casinos, but are of a newer design only in play in Manchester, Portsmouth and Cardiff (as far as I am aware). The only other chip on the table was a £25 - nothing bigger, although the maximum pair plus bet on the 3 card was only £20 and the maximum ante was £50, so they had no use for larger chips!

Although a couple of hundred down at one point a good run around midnight brought us back up to (almost) even, and so we called it a night.

There were 50p and £2.50 chips in use around the casino but I alreday have some in the collection, so didn't feel like trying to hit a blackjack to get hold of a snapper.

Didn't make it to the Gala casino, but as their chips are all the same no loss as far as chipping was concerned!

Overall a great birthday present, lots of chips for the collection and 2 very different casinos.

Jason