G2E ASIA 2011
G2E ASIA 2011 W
G2E Asia has evolved, as has Macau’s gaming business – Casino International reports back from the area’s premier gaming exhibition
hen Macau began hosting a gaming exhibition, its value was negligible – a large group of suppliers gathered for a very, very small group of
customers. Now the show has spread its wings somewhat, and is servicing the entire Asia- Pacific region’s gaming requirements and allowing the industry’s most significant suppliers to show their wares before a truly international audience. After simply trying to apply US or international
product to the Macau and Asian markets, international suppliers have finally learned that tailoring product to the market reaps dividends – and with this in mind, the star of the show for this journalist was JCM, the bill validator company that’s becoming so much more. On their stand was a concept – and that’s an important distinction, as it was not the finished product – that will make its way on to almost every table game in Asia, if JCM can deliver. A few years ago, JCM developed Trident, a bill
validator fitted to a card table. A neat idea, and one that can help a casino on the accounting side no end – but no use at all in a country where large numbers of low denomination bills are used on table games. This would slow the game down to the point where its benefits are far outweighed by potential revenue loss and customer unhappiness. So what’s their solution for Macau and other similar markets? Project 8 is its working name, and JCM have worked with Japanese company Fujitsu to develop it so far. Project 8 is a note sorter attached to the table game. A player buys into the game by proffering notes to the dealer in the usual way; the dealer then drops the notes into the sorter, where they are held in escrow so that the dealer can communicate to the player the value of the notes; if the player agrees, the gaming chips are issued. With the cash held in escrow rather than going right into the drop box, the player has the option to call the money back if they disagree with the reader’s evaluation, for example.
This whole process – sorting the notes –
takes around five seconds. In total, with communicating with the dealer, agreeing totals, and notes being sorted, the whole process takes
Shuffle Master’s new CEO Gavin Isaacs
around 15 seconds to process 12 notes. The benefits, when you look at the numbers, are obvious – more play, less downtime, happier players and increased profits. JCM estimates that this could lead to up to an hour of saved gameplay every day, though this is a rough figure. The sorter will work with two 1700-note cash boxes, so it won’t need to be emptied that frequently either. And once you tie this in to JCM’s Intelligent Cash Box system, the benefits in terms of security are huge. As JCM’s Tom Nieman explained: “No more drop box, no more not knowing how much money is on the table – today it’s a world in which accountability is a real priority. “It’s about the potential of high-speed
transaction automation in table games. Because of the density of table gaming here in Macau, the buy-ins are so large and the number of notes so great there is a recurring break point in games. To process a buy-in, the notes are fanned and inspected with a wand, approved by the pit boss collected and diapered into a drop box; we’ve timed this process and it can take over two minutes for 40 notes to be accepted. In that break point no one is making any money, the player can’t play; nobody wins.” As it stands, the prototype is too bulky to be workable – but if JCM can brings its size down, this is a sure-fire winner for Asian casinos.
enjoyed his first exhibition at the helm of the highly respected table games innovators. He told Macau Business why he made the move from Bally, which surprised some in the industry. “It’s a great career move for me. I wanted to become the head of the company and at Bally I would have had to wait a long time. Shuffle Master had an opportunity, and it was a really good fit for me. It’s the same industry but it’s a quite different part of the industry; it’s on-competitive for Bally, so we came to an agreement and it’s been a good move for me.” “Shuffle Master is a very stable company but I can see areas I’d like to improve. The mantra from the board is we want to grow the company and we’ve already started moving into the online space.” Shuffle Master’s table game intellectual properties are absolutely ideal for online gaming, but it’s this that has caused them some problems in the past – with some operators using the game ideas without paying the piper. “We’re licensing those people who are already using our IP and making sure they pay for it – we don’t want them to stop using it, we just want them to pay for what they’re already using,” explained Isaacs. The company is now focussing on slots in
their attractive Equinox cabinet, outside North America, with some solid product aimed squarely at Australia, Asia, and eventually Latin America and possibly Europe. They’re already working well in Australia, so the chances are good for the slots to succeed internationally. Also of note is a new shuffler which not only
shuffles up to eight decks, it will tell the dealer if there is a card missing.
Macau has rapidly become the market that the
world looks to in terms of gaming revenues, consistently breaking its own records and all thanks to table games, not slots, the traditional bread-and-butter of North American casinos. But slots are catching on in Asia, though it has taken some time – and wherever there is an emerging market for slots, Novomatic will be there. The European company is widely respected throughout the gaming industry, with a variety of
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