Inside Asian Gaming

March 2008 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 29 RFID Gaming’s system reduces the chances of players’ attention being distracted or broken and them getting up to go elsewhere. “The last thing a casino operator wants is for his system or his technology to slow down play,” explains Mr Oosthoek. “Right now we’re reading everything instantaneously,” adds Mr McMeekin. “With other systems you experience a four- to eight-second lag or more if there is a large number of chips. We can do hundreds in mere seconds.We can read the entire chip tray without a break.” Smooth play A smooth flow of information on who’s betting on which games and how much, can reduce the likelihood of a high stakes game being interrupted at a crucial moment in order for a chip tray to be filled or the chip inventory to be counted. “When an operator does a chip tray fill, the Chip Inventory System can check if the fill is going to the right table and if it’s been accepted in the chip tray,” says Mr Oosthoek. “All this happened in real time and can be monitored via a workstation, either remotely away from the gaming floor or from the table’s management system PC at the table.” Fraudulent events such as pinching and capping, where players attempt to retrospectively manipulate their bets depending onwhether they or the bank hold a winning hand, can be eliminated by 13.56 MHz PJM RFID, says Sandra Low, Progressive Gaming’s Marketing Director. Fraud buster “Our system can read chip denomination as well as quantity. It’s the only one that can do this. Other systems will give you the total chip volume, but won’t give you the breakdown.” “Even when casino chips are stacked together, 13.56MHz PJM can still read them and send the data back to the system where its sorted into relevant groups such as denomination,” adds Mr Oosthoek. “That’s one of the strengths of our 13.56 MHz PJM technology. It can read a lot of tags that are very, very close together. This is a completely different requirement than for example the RFID tag used to identify your suitcase as it goes through an airport,” he explains. Theft prevention CIS also guards against more traditional forms of dishonesty such as physical theft. “When the chip tray is in locked mode or is in the process of being locked, if anyone attempts to take chips out, the system registers this and an alert is sent. It isn’t a blaring horn on the gaming floor but an electronic alert to a predefined group such as surveillance and key members of management,” says Mr Oosthoek. “Those chips are then electronically ‘marked’ as stolen or missing. Information about them can be put either manually or automatically into a program called Chip A coherent IT strategy using good quality programs and robust technology systems is particularly important for operators wishing to manage several properties from a central location, says Mr McMeekin. “If an operator is seeking to manage information across several properties, then the data numbers can be pretty frightening without a PJM system,” he points out. Speed essential “With a typical tray fill of up to 600 chips, our system takes two seconds or less to read and register it,” says. Mr Jeroen Oosthoek, New Business Director, Asia. Two seconds also happens to be the time it takes the average male pedestrian to walk ten feet according to a study published by the United States’Transportation Research Board. In other words, the speed of Progressive