How To Use Golden Chips

Reading Time: 8 mins

Golden Chips are a type of reward that casinos sometimes offer as part of promotions.

A Golden Chip is a form of free bet that is suitable for use in table games, like blackjack and roulette.

Golden chips can be nicely profitable, but how you use them will impact their profitability.

In this guide I will be going through the following points to help you become a golden chip expert:

How Do Golden Chips Work?

When you receive a golden chip, you can use this to place a free bet on a table game.

It’s risk-free, because if your chip loses, then you have not lost any of your own money.

If the chip wins, you will earn some winnings and make a profit.

Golden chips work a bit like sports free bets, in that they are stake not returned.

The casino only pays you the winnings from golden chips. They do not pay you the chip value.

If you play a £1 hand of blackjack with real money and it wins, you receive £2 back. This is your £1 stake + £1 winnings.

But if you place a £1 golden chip on blackjack, if it wins, you receive £1 cash. This is because you don’t get the stake back, only the £1 winnings.

This impacts how we should use golden chips, which we’ll discuss later.

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When you receive golden chips, open an eligible blackjack or roulette game.

The golden chips should appear in the section where you select what sized chip to use. This will look like a gold-coloured chip with the value written on it.

Select the golden chip here and you should then be able to place a bet with it.

One Golden Chip Per Round Rule

Often you can only use one golden chip per game round.

This isn’t always the case, but where it is, you will need to use your golden chips one at a time.

So if you have 10 golden chips, you will need to do 10 separate blackjack hands or 10 spins of roulette.

Golden Chip Payouts

If you are familiar with matched betting, you will know that, when using a free bet, the higher the odds, the more profit you can make.

Golden chips are similar.

The lower the probability of an event happening, the higher the return from the golden chip will be.

This means that we have a decision to make when we use golden chips.

Do we take a low variance option, where our golden chips win more often, but accept small payouts and a low EV?

Or do we take a higher variance option? We win less often, but when we do, the payouts are much larger, and we make more EV.

The below image shows 6 different potential placements of a chip on a roulette board. These could all be ways to use your golden chips.

A – Even Money Bet – Red/Black, Even/Odd, 1-18/19.36. Covers approximately half of the board.
B – Line Bet – chip placed between two rows of three numbers and a third – covers 6 numbers.
C – Four bet – chip placed between four numbers
D – Street – chip placed between a third and one row of three numbers – covers 3 numbers
E – Split – chip placed between two numbers
F – Straight up – chip placed on one number.

Each placement has a different chance of winning, payout and EV, which we explain in the table below:

Placement	Odds Of Winning	Payout	EV
Blackjack	1 in 2.01 times	£1	49.5p
Even Money Bet (A)	1 in 2.05 times	£1	49p
Line (B)	1 in 6.16 times	£5	81p
Four Bet (C)	1 in 9.25 times	£8	86p
Street (D)	1 in 12.33 times	£11	89p
Split (E)	1 in 18.5 times	£17	92p
Straight Up (F)	1 in 37 times	£35	95p

The payout and EV are based upon the golden chip having a £1 value.

Sometimes golden chips can be worth different amounts, but this should always be specified in your offer’s T&Cs.

Our Recommended Approach

The EV of a golden chip can vary significantly.

A £1 chip has just 49p EV when used on blackjack or a roulette even money bet (like red or black).

Whilst this is the lowest variance option, the EV is really low.

In comparison, a £1 golden chip is worth 95p EV if used on a single number.

But this is a super high variance option. After all, we expect to win with a single number bet 1 in 37 times!

We believe that it’s a good idea to prioritise long term value over a higher chance of making small profits in the short term.

We would avoid using golden chips on blackjack or even money roulette bets.

However, we also wouldn’t recommend single number bets either.

This is too high a variance.

A great compromise between EV and variance is to use golden chips on a Line Bet or a Four Bet.

These have a higher chance of winning than straight-up bets and have a very good EV of over 80p per £1 golden chip.

If you were to place a four-bet, with 5 golden chips, one should hit more than 50% of the time. Whilst you won’t win every time, you should still hit a win fairly often.