Originally Posted by dhuey
If anyone ever needs to turn non-nego. chips into regular chips, with the lowest cost and risk possible, I suggest the craps table. Put half of the stack on Pass, the other half on Don't Pass. There is a 97.2% chance that you will lose on one stack and win on the other (any initial roll except 12). Yes, there is a 2.8% chance of a 12 on the initial roll, in which case the Pass loses and Don't Pass pushes (i.e., you lose half of your chips).
Actually, to reduce your risk of ruin (i.e., chance of losing everything), you should make multiple minimum bets. For example, if you have $1000 in non-negotiable chips and the minimum bet is $5, instead of placing two $500 bets (with a 1/36 chance of losing half your chips), you should place two $5 bets and repeat 100 times. On average, you'd win $972 back after betting your $1000.
Also, as someone else pointed out, casinos typically will not let you hedge your bet like this. You will need an accomplice to place the second bet. However, it may become obvious what you are doing if you and your accomplice are always placing offsetting bets.
This "hedged" conversion of non-negot. chips can also be accomplished using Roulette -- preferably European Roulette (single zero). The house edge in European Roulette is about 2.7%. If you place two offsetting bets (e.g., red & black, or even and odd), the chance of losing is 1/37.
Notably, with Roulette, you could split your bet 3 ways on a single spin of the wheel and guarantee that you'd end up with most of your money back. For example, if you had $1000 in non-negotiable chips, you should bet $30 on zero, $485 on odd and $485 on even. If odd or even come up, you end up with $970. If ball lands on zero, it pays 35 to 1 and you get $1050. Again, you may need an accomplice to place the offsetting bets.
I note that I am not advocating that anyone do this. Just pointing out a riskless way to convert non-negot chips to real chips.