Old dogs, new tricks
TABLE GAMIING
The basic rules of play may be many decades old, but table games are continuing to evolve in order to attract customers and maximise profitability for casinos. And there are even a handful of entirely novel games, as Barnaby Page reports
T
able games are by far the most venerable form of gaming on offer in the casino – Roulette dates back two centuries – but they continue to develop, with many manufacturers now incorporating digital
elements into traditional games, some adding new twists to old favourites, and others creating entirely fresh forms of table entertainment.
Few have gone as far as EPayment Solutions, an
Australian firm whose principal product, Racing Card Derby, is an all-new game which make its US debut this month, first at MGM’s Circus Circus in Reno and then at Ameristar’s Cactus Petes in Jackpot, Nevada. Those two trial deployments are part of the final review process the game is undergoing with the Nevada Gaming Control Board, whose approval will open up the Las Vegas market, and Racing Card Derby is also gaining ground in Asia, where it is available to players on a casino cruise ship plying between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
It will go live next month at
Resorts World Manila, the firm’s sales and marketing manager Matthew Bielenberg told Casino International, and shortly afterwards at the Thunderbird resort, also in the Phillipines; that country’s Gaming and Amusing Corporation (PAGCOR) will receive its first
30 MARCH 2011
Racing Card Derby tables in May, and approval is also expected this year by Macau, Singapore and Queensland, Australia.
The game itself is relatively simple. A standard deck
of cards is used at a table seating up to ten players, and results are expressed in a horse-racing metaphor; 42 different bets are available, with odds ranging from 2-1 to 10-1, of which nine will win in each game, and the house edge is higher than usual. So what does this enthusiasm for a product that has none of the pedigree of mainstream table games like Blackjack and Poker indicate?
Perhaps it comes about because Racing Card
Derby encapsulates many of the features that are also now enhancing more traditional games. For a start, it combines electronics such as automatic card recognition, LED lighting and an animated large- screen display – showing, of course, a horse race, whose “winners” indicate which bets have been successful – with live dealer control, and EPayment Solutions is not the only vendor taking this compromise route.
Many believe that, while a totally automated table game is perfectly possible from a technology point of view, the dealer adds a social element that players find appealing; another supplier of table games, DigiDeal, goes so far as to argue that automating some functions not only helps speed up play and minimise dealer errors, it also means that dealers’ technical skills become less important, so “casinos can hire for personality and sociability”, the dealer in effect becoming less the enabler of play and more the genial host.
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