A stack is simply a pile of casino chips. Stacks are most often made up of 20 or more chips, but there is no fixed number that defines one, so the word is used loosely. The chip value doesn’t matter either: as long as there is a handful of chips piled together, it counts as a stack.
The term is heard constantly at roulette tables, but players use it in every game where chips serve as currency, which makes it one of the most common words on a land-based casino floor. In poker it also describes how many chips a player has in front of them, so a “short stack” or a “big stack” tells you how much room a player has to bet.
Stacks in digital table games
Online roulette and live dealer interfaces mimic physical stacks with chip graphics, and a clear stake display lets players see their total bet at a glance. In online poker every seat displays its stack, often in big blinds as well as chips, because stack depth drives strategy.