Table Gaming – a Move into the Future
A speech prepared for the Casinos and Gaming Conference, on the Development of Table Gaming Technology to prevent continuing deterioration of facility market share.
By Andrew MacDonald
Casino Manager, Conrad Jupiters, 1997
What is happening to Casino Table Games?| Will this be allowed to continue till the eventual extinction of table games? Is a Casino still a Casino if is doesn’t offer table games? | Well you don’t have to be too bright obviously to use such an arbitrary system to your advantage. The more you bring the more you get and you don’t have to play any differently. | For high rollers on table games the same is true, although we certainly don’t advertise it as “Cash Back” for this group. | With a broad based accurate table rating system offering real benefits to customers the same could occur with table game players. | That may also be extended to ensure all systems within the facility may be interfaced to enhance service delivery to our customers. The future might be something like this… | A list of the issues which might be looked at include the following | Service delivery is obviously critical in today’s market place but knowing what to deliver and implementing change quickly to meet new needs is even more important. |
So, Casino Managers moved from what were relatively arbitrary systems often based on personal contact and knowledge of players to more mathematically based criteria for establishing a customers value. To do this, however, you need to determine average bet levels, type of game played and length of period played. So for example, we know that a player plays $500 a hand at Baccarat for 1 hour. Based on other surveyed and statistical data we also know that on Baccarat we have 45 resolved hands per hour and that the house advantage is 1.25%. Therefore, the player’s theoretical loss will be around $280. Again, depending on the individual Casino’s policy we might provide between 25% and 50% of that back to the player in complimentaries.
To work this through and collate this information for a large number of players, Casinos turned to computers with significant processing power and the ability to manage large databases. But there are still “holes” in this system. We still manually estimate average bet levels and manually input the data. Also, we use system averages for various factors which may not be representative of the actual play.
Thus, while this system is certainly better than the old “gut feel” approach it still may under value some customers while over valuing others.
To overcome this, various systems have been developed which record every aspect of a customers table play. The most sophisticated examples of which are Mikohn’s SafeJack and SafeBac systems both of which are still in R&D; phase. SafeJack for example monitors every aspect of a Blackjack game.
Each time a card is removed from the specially designed dealing shoe it is read and displayed on the Dealers small V.F.D. screen in front of them. Once the player has two cards the total is shown for the Dealer. On the round of play being completed the screen also shows the Dealer whether or not the Player has won, lost or drawn.
Embedded within the gaming chips the player uses is a micro-chip which has an assigned value and is encoded so that it may be ascribed to particular players. Built into the table under each betting box is a small aerial which means that not only do we know which cards are dealt to each box but how much is being wagered and by whom. The players themselves are identifiable by their mag-stripe player card with their details encoded thereon. In the future, Smart Cards may carry even more information about the players.
Thus, it is possible to know exactly how much a player bets, how many hands they play and even how good their play is compared to Basic Strategy on Blackjack (although this last aspect is still in the developmental stage). The indicative cost for this system is around US$1,400 per month to lease all necessary equipment (table, shoe, chips, etc).
Of possibly more interest to Casino Operators in this country is a similar system for Baccarat. Given that this is the game of choice for many high rollers from Asia and that Australian Casinos currently spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year manually recording the individual bets made it is easy to see the value in moving to such a system. Also now that we have varying tax rates on different business segments in many states it would be clearly advantageous from the regulatory perspective to have more foolproof automated systems.
Once this level of accuracy is achieved for table game play then no doubt we will see the true integration of slot club marketing systems with table game player rating systems. Many slot clubs (gaming machine clubs) both in the United States and now in Australia offer Cash Back to players either based on their turnover (total amount bet) or their theoretical loss.
