Wits and Wagers Deluxified


Deluxified Wits and Wagers in action!

For some time now I've been looking to deluxify my Wits and Wagers (I have the original edition myself) with real poker chips. With the beautiful new Vegas playmat, I had to take the upgrade to the next level for the full Vegas experience!

the extra large Wits and Wager Vegas mat

Upgrading Options

The biggest problem with upgrading the tokens with good poker chips is the colors. Poker chips generally have a different color for each denomination, whereas W&W has a different color for each team, with the same denominations, plus the reward tokens that can have different denominations. Moreover, poker chips are only sold by rolls of 25 or 50 of each color.

I wanted to have 2 chips of each color for the wager tokens, and with colors corresponding to the team colors on the betting cards. One of those chips should be $100, and the other one $200. W&W Party comes with 50 reward tokens of $100, and the Vegas mat gives you an additional 20 tokens of $500, and 10 tokens of $1,000. This is a total of $25,000 in rewards.

I used the Bicycle chips for some time, and they are very good for the price, but I wanted professional poker chips (without breaking the bank). Good poker chips vary in quality and their price generally vary between $0.15 and $0.90. I looked around for some mid-range poker chips, and I found that clay chips had several advantages over the ceramic ones:
  • their quality is pretty consistent regardless of the brand
  • you can find blank samples (without denomination)
  • most of them have a 1-inch circle indentation in the middle for the label

The Chip Samples

Apache Poker Chips offer a large selection of poker chips and samples for pretty good prices. They offer 2 blank samples: the Milano and the Majestic. (They have other options with denominations, you can just remove the labels.) The Milano samples are very nice, but the sample only contain 7 colors which don't correspond to the colors I'm looking for. The Majestic samples, have 10 colors, and 7 or 8 of them are close to the team colors. (The red and pink are a little too similar, so I only use pink when there's 7 teams, or I use orange.)

Majestic blank sample poke chips.

I ordered 2 samples of the Majestic, to have 2 chips of each color. (total $11.98)

I prepared my own custom labels and printed them on laser sticker paper. You have to use a laser printer to bake the ink on the paper: don't use inkjet as it is prone to smudging from sweat and manipulations. (Alternatively, you can order a professional printing on vinyl stickers.) I used a 1-inch paper punch to cut the labels, but you can also cut them with scissors if you have the patience.


Custom labels for wager tokens (pdf link below)

I originally copied the Majestic labels, but I re-designed them later with different artwork to avoid copyright issues. The $100 wager chips have a black background to be like the normal $100 black Majestic poker chips. The $200 has a white background to easily differentiate it from the $100 one. You can download the PDF here or on boardgamegeek.com.

Poker chips with team color

The Reward Tokens


The problem with the reward tokens is that they should not have the same colors as the wager tokens chosen from the samples. Most sets use black for the $100 denomination, which is fine because black is not a team color. But they also use purple for $500, and yellow for $1000, and those are already team colors, so using these colors as reward can create confusion.

I ordered 100 black Majestic tokens with $100 denomination (you must order a multiple of 25) at $0.39 a piece (total $39). You can get by with only 50 chips, like W&W Party has in the box.

For the higher denominations, I had to find a different solution to avoid the color confusion. I thought of using the very nice Majestic poker plaques, but at $5.25 a piece that was not going to be possible.

I found those nice alternatives, which are only about $1.20 a piece. Since this is for higher denominations, I only need:

This gives me a total of $55,000 in rewards and should be enough for my high-roller friends. (total $41.93)

Reward chips and poker plaques

Storage Solution

The mat is very large (24"x36") and needs to be rolled for storage. Storing 114 poker chips, plus 35 plaques is quite a challenge. I found that this extra long card case is exactly what I need (I had to cut the handle). It has just enough room to fit a small 100 chips tray, all the plaques, the erasable boards and dry erase markers. Most importantly, the case is soft and has round corners, which allows me to wrap the mat around it and fit the whole thing in a tripod bag.

Everything fits in the 33" tripod bag

There is extra room or the rules and a small box with the question cards (order more questions at the North Star games website). And this is my complete Deluxified Wits and Wagers Vegas solution in one bag!

Wits and Wagers Vegas deluxified with real poker chips!


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