At the end of a session at a table game, if you didn't bust, you will "color up" your chips to make it easier to cash out at the cage.

Be careful when this happens.

I played a little craps last night at a casino -- it was a $5 table and I bought in for $100. But two shooters back-to-back had decent rolls and I "colored up" $255.

I always keep my eye on my stacks of chips once I put them on the table for the dealers to "color up" into black and green chips. In my case I had two stacks of red ($5) and one big stack of white ($1) chips.

It's a "good thing" I was looking because my base dealer pushed my chips to the center of the table where another dealer took a red chip off one of the stacks to "even out" a short stack in the bank. I saw it and said "wait -- that's mine." The dealer immediately realized what he had done and corrected the error.

But had I not been looking I would have been shorted $5.

It's hard enough winning at craps -- it shouldn't be any harder when a dealer mishandles your chips.