About me

My name is Vitaly Safronov and I collect casino chips. I member of Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club #R-8417. My passion is associated primarily with the love for the game itself. I began playing card games yet in my early childhood, such as durak, war, bingo, and backgammon. As a teenager, I started playing for money with friends. At the age of 18 years, I went to work in a casino as a dealer. When I got my first salary, I went to a nearby casino with my friends. In Russia there is a proverb that he who wins for the first time, he is doomed to a lifetime of playing and losing. He, who loses, will treat the game calmly. I held my own for the first time in a casino. So, my fate was not predetermined by pattern 🙂

While working in a casino, I achieved significant success and in a few years I became a casino manager and I trained the staff to work as a dealer. I continued to go to a casino as a player and every time picked one chip as a souvenir. It wasn’t collecting yet. I just kept some memorabilia and chips were the most convenient.

I took up journalism after I left casino in 2000. I had my own several sites on the Internet devoted to gambling and casino, published articles in other online and printed media creating publications about gambling business. At the same time, I studied advantage game in casino and started travelling across Russia and later in other countries playing in casino in blackjack and poker if the rules of the games were in favor of the player. This gave me the chance to replenish my collection of chips from various cities and countries. Sometimes I came to a new city and immediately visited all the casinos, taking a chip in each of them. For example, arriving for the first time in Kiev (the capital of Ukraine), I visited 12 casinos during one day.

At some point I began to just travel. Without a link to advantage game. Currently, I keep writing about gambling. I am in contact with my friends who work in casino, but I am not actively playing myself. I am very interested in visiting new places, including new casinos. Especially in places that are hard to get. For example, a casino in the Indian State of Sikkim or a casino in the Russian city of Nizhnevartovsk. I keep travelling so far.

I created this site as an electronic catalogue of my collection and notes about the most interesting places I visited.

E-mail me at: vitaly@safronov.org

P.S. My English is not as good as I would like it. If you find a mistake on the site, please, e-mail me the corrected version.