Casino workers usually allude to chips as "cheques," which is of French ancestry. In reality, there’s a distinction between a chip and a cheque. A cheque is a chip with a denomination written on it and is constantly valued at the amount of the printed amount. Chips, however, don’t have values printed on them and any colour can be worth any cash amount as determined by the house. For example, in a poker tournament, the croupier might state that white chips as one dollar and blue chips as 10 dollars; whereas, in a roulette game, the dealer may state that white chips as twenty-five cents and blue chips as 2 dollars. An additional example, the cheap red, white, and blue plastic chips you can get at Target for your weekly poker game are referred to as "chips" owing to the fact that they don’t have values imprinted on them.
When you plop your money down on the craps table and hear the dealer say, "Cheque change only," he is basically telling the boxman that a new patron wants to trade money for chips (cheques), and that the money on the craps table isn’t part of the action. Cash plays in almost all casinos, so if you put a $5 bill on the Pass Line just prior to the tosser throwing the dice and the croupier does not change your cash for chips, your money is "live" and "in play." When the dealer says, "Cheque change only," the boxman understands that your cash is not part of the action.
In reality, in in real life craps games, we bet with cheques, and not chips. Ever so often, a gambler will walk up to the the craps table, drop a 100 dollar cheque, and inform the croupier, "Cheque change." It’s amusing to pretend to be a novice and ask the dealer, "Hey, I’m new to this game, what is a cheque?" Most of the time, their crazy responses will entertain you.