Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | April 2010 20 RGB’s Tiki Tiki Bang Bang the customers’ response to the products we have here at Asia’s GEM,” says K.C. Chuah , a Group Executive Director of RGB ’s parent company Dreamgate Corporation Berhad. “Pagcor have been very supportive of the work we have been doing here and we enjoy coming to Asia’s GEM.” “Our Poker RFID [radio frequency identification] product is getting very popular in the market,” says Christophe Leparoux , Manager, International Sales and Marketing, for Gaming Partners International . “All the chips are RFID enabled. The system reads the pot and calculates the rake automatically. That speeds up the game and gives up to 30% more hands per hour, securing a quick return on investment even for capped rakes,” explains Mr Leparoux. “We also have the table side display. This is very good for the players because they like to get the [pot and rake] information straight from the chip reader. We have 25 tables already fully deployed in Europe. Here in the Philippines the market is getting big on poker, not only with the casinos, but also with poker rooms and poker clubs. We are confident that the next step for the market here will be that competition [between “One of our key initiatives is to try and deliver a greater quantity of products to the Asia Pacific markets and we are focusing on how we can access a larger range of products that are available in the U.S. and then customise them to suit the regions,” says DavidPunter . Mr Punter was appointed in December to the role of General Manager Asia Pacific for Aristocrat Technologies . “That doesn’t mean we take the exact same product and drop it in to the market. Others have done that and it hasn’t worked very successfully,” adds Mr Punter. “We’re very focused on understanding what [Asian] players want, we work closely with our customers and are planning to host some seminars in the first half of this year and around G2E Asia, with the key operators in the business. They have insights from their players on some future trends in the market and we can work on capturing these. We have our own vision and plans as a company, but any insights and any opportunity we have to build on our knowledge are very valuable. We’ve already seen the benefits of that approach. Customers told us they needed an Asian link [product] so we gave them FA FA FA configured for the regional market. It wasn’t that hard in itself, but the value of the consultation strategy was proven by the trend with other manufacturers focusing on more Asian games and Asian link products.” Christophe Leparoux, GPI David Punter, Aristocrat Technologies poker operators] will lead to an upgrading of the way poker rooms are operated here. We are hoping that RFID will be one of the solutions chosen in that upgrade process. “We had some very good responses on the first morning of the show,” adds Mr Leparoux. “People see how GPI’s Poker RFID speeds up the game, provides more hands per hour, makes things easier for the dealer by enabling easier monitoring of the game and makes sure all the chips are authentic. It also makes sure that all the calculations are absolutely accurate. We think the product has great potential.” Asia’s GEM