Over a single day, Hedlund and his team donned their sterilized gloves and headed out to five separate casinos (here, numbered one to five so as not to name and shame the fair establishments from which they come) on The Strip, collecting chips of various denominations and taking them back to the lab for analysis. With his motley crew of eager students, Hedlund made some grim findings, as well as uncovering a few surprising results. With the personal hygiene of millions of poker players on our minds (not to mention the chance to find some really gross bacteria), we immediately contacted Professor Hedlund and put him to work. The cleanliness of poker chips is something that has been playing on our minds here at Bluff Towers ever since last year's WSOP. Make sure you wash your hands before reading on.Įver wonder if you could contract Ebola by playing with poker chips? Whether surreptitiously picking your nose after raking in a pot (as one does) could lead to you developing super-bug MRSA? If you have, then you are not alone. With the health and safety of the Vegas poker-playing populous in mind, we commissioned professor Brian Hedlund, a team of students from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and their laboratory to analyze the state of poker chips from five leading Strip casinos. We've all heard those scare stories about why you shouldn't eat the pretzels at the bar, and that got us thinking. So, as if you haven't got enough to worry about, what with the terrorists and the global warming, we decided to get you all neurotic about the hygiene levels of your poker chips, too. We at Bluff like nothing more than whipping up some good, old-fashioned media hysteria. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser

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