Inside Asian Gaming

February 2010 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 43 these games, there are a couple of challenges they have to overcome with their dealers. The first is knowing how to recognise a winning hand and be able to pay it accurately. So, if you put dealers who don’t necessarily know what they’re doing on one of these games, the house may not knowwhen they’re paying out players incorrectly. The players are always going to let you know if you’re not paying them correctly when it’s not in their favour, but if a dealer pays a player incorrectly when it’s in their favour, they may not say anything. They may just walk away with the chips. “But on this [i-Table running Ultimate Texas Hold’em], where you’ve got higher odds [e.g. 50:1 on the Trips side bet or Royal Flush paying 500:1], you’ve got 100% security and 100% accuracy on pays and takes. Casinos are only going to pull money back into the house when they’re supposed to take it, and they’re going to be paying out every player for every bet 100% accurately. So on these specialty games that are growing in popularity, the i-Table gives casinos the ability to have virtually any dealer deal the games. They aren’t going to have to have a specialised group of dealers that are trained to deal these games: they can pull a blackjack or baccarat dealer over because the system does the payouts for them. Usually, when you bring in some of these newer [game] titles, you have to go through pretty extensive dealer training, but the i-Table minimizes the need for it.” Apart from doing away with dealer error, the i-Table makes the game “100% secure”, states Ms Clark. “You don’t have to worry about players capping or pinching their bets. There’s no way for them to do that because once the first card or hand is pulled from the shoe or shuffler, all betting is stopped. It’s all tied in to the game rules, and players can’t deviate from that because it’s electronic wagering. They can’t manipulate that.” The i-Table also speeds up the payout process, and hence the number of hands dealt per hour. “The dealer’s not having to go and look at every individual wager to determine whether or not they’ve won.” According to Ms Clark, Shuffle Master is in the process of implementing many of its popular speciality game titles on the i-Table platform. “So the way it will work for the casino is when they install it, part of the agreement will be licensing which particular games they want to have access to. Then it’s up to them which games they want to have live. You know, if they have mostly Caribbean Stud during the day, then at night they want to swap one of them out, that’s completely up to them. That’s all going to be included as part of the package.” Shuffle Master In general, traditional Chinese games such as paikao , fantan and fish-prawn-crab have had a hard time keeping up with overall growth, while western games such as roulette have made small but steady gains following the post-monopoly arrival of glitzy new casinos offering a wider selection of games and attracting more international visitors. Caribbean Stud Poker is one of the ‘other’ table games that has held steady against the baccarat tide. Shuffle Master, which owns Caribbean Stud and a suite of other proprietary table games, looks set to increase the market share of several also-rans with its i-Table™ electronic table system, which allows casinos much greater ease, flexibility and efficiency in offering those games. “A key advantage to the i-Table is that if a casino that offers proprietary games realizes they’re getting more interest in one particular game and they need another table offering it, in a matter of minutes they can swap the i-Table over,” explains Shuffle Master Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Kirsten Clark. “The felt is completely agnostic, the player terminals are all electronic, so as soon as they determine ‘we have a larger demand for this,’ they can make the switch,” she continues. “In Macau, it could be Caribbean Stud or Three Card Poker— they can instantly offer an additional table on the floor without having to change the signage or the felt. It all changes instantly.” Other games that will be available worldwide on the i-Table include Blackjack with Royal Match and Bet the Set side bets; Baccarat with the Dragon Bonus side bet; and Ultimate Texas Hold’em, a popular hold-em style game. Ms Clark offered Inside Asian Gaming a demonstration of how i-Table prevented dealer- error and saved the time and expense of ensuring dealers are fully trained on all the new speciality games a casino may wish to offer. “From the casino’s perspective, when they offer Three Card Poker on the i-Table, dealt by the i-Deal™ speciality shuffler The i-Table ensures accurate payouts on games offering higher odds, such as the Trips side bet on Ultimate Texas Hold’em