Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | August 2009 28 Table to Cage Gaming Partners International has been managing Asian gaming chip supplies for more than four decades G aming Partners International S.A.S. (GPI) is a strong contender for the title of longest continuous supplier of equipment to the Macau gaming market. The French company has been supplying betting chips and plaques to Dr Stanley Ho’s gaming operation for more than 40 years. To put this extraordinary market presence in perspective, when GPI delivered its first consignment to Macau, it was the year that The Beatles released their Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and two years before US astronauts landed on the Moon. “We’ve been supplying STDM and latterly SJM since 1967. In that time we have supplied several million pieces of gaming chips to the Macau market,” says Christophe Leparoux, Manager, International Sales and Marketing for GPI. Constant development GPI hasn’t rested on its laurels since the ending of Dr Ho’s gaming monopoly. It currently holds around 90% of the Macau market for gaming chips and plaques— many of them fitted with tiny silicon circuits that can send radio messages to computers so that casinos can keep track of their chip inventory. This radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is also used to help prevent counterfeiting of medicines and other high value goods. In the context of the gaming industry, GPI says its current goal is to help the market convert from security checks done on chips at the casino cage, to a comprehensive audit system using RFID readers on gaming tables. “Here [in Asia] most of the casinos using RFID are using readers at the cage only, for the moment, as a filter to check all ‘in and out’ transactions,” explains M. Leparoux. “The operators here in Asia are investing in RFID for security purposes to secure their chip bank. That’s good. But everybody will tell you that counterfeiters will try and introduce fake chips at the table, not at the cage,” he stresses. “At the moment in many cases operators are securing the cage but not the table. Securing the cage is better than nothing— you can check transactions. But the next step would be to have reader at the table so that one can regularly check the chips, or review operations if table staff or security have concerns about a customer. You can make checks very quickly on a case-by-case basis using a small computer display available to the dealer. It’s about working toward full deployment of RFID technology.” In security industry circles there’s a saying that technology is a great tool but never a total substitute for the human eye and human mind when it comes to stopping scams and fraud. So how secure is RFID? “The [computer] chips [in RFID gambling GPI chips from the Circus Casino, Liverpool, UK