Question 761: Winning's in their blood

Borrowed from the world of gambling, __X__ is a term used to describe stocks of a company with a national reputation for quality, reliability and the ability to operate profitably in good times and bad.

Based on the idea that different tokens dictate different values ranging from lowest to highest, the phrase was coined by Oliver Gingold of Dow Jones sometime in 1923 or 1924. Company folklore recounts that the term apparently got its start when Gingold was standing by the stock ticker at the brokerage firm that later became Merrill Lynch. Noticing several trades at USD$200 or USD$250 a share or more, he said to Lucien Hooper of W.E. Hutton & Co. that he intended to return to the office to "write about these __X__ stocks." Thus the phrase was born. It has been in use ever since, originally in reference to high-priced stocks, more commonly used today to refer to high-quality stocks.

Yenu?
Give original funda behind __X__ with reference to gambling.


 ANSWER:


BLUE CHIP 

 

 

 

 

FUNDA:
As befits the high-risk nature of stock picking, "blue chip" derives from poker. The simplest sets of poker betting discs include white, red, and blue chips, with tradition dictating that the blues are highest in value. If a white chip is worth $1, a red is usually worth $5, and a blue $10. The etymology may come from the color's royal lineage—an aristocrat is known as a "blue blood". Blue blood is a translation of the Spanish phrase sangre azul, which described the Spanish royal family and other high nobility who claimed to be of Visigothic descent, in contrast to the Moors.