Inside Asian Gaming

May 2010 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 31 Walker Digital Gaming Moore, “and that’s without even counting its counterfeit detection capability,” he adds. The‘brain’of Perfect Pay is its RFID technology, including the tags embedded in the gaming chips and the antennae inside the table to recognise what those chips are doing. Perfect Pay turns your casino currency into a self-reporting, self-policing and crucially foolproof part of your table operation. “Players can’t cheat it, dealers can’t cheat it, counterfeiters can’t scam it and it eliminates dealer errors. What that means is that the good dealers will get promoted and the average dealers will continue to be effective on table games,” explains Mr Moore. Chip recognition On the outside, the RFID gambling chip looks and feels like a standard gaming chip. On the inside, each chip is embedded with a tiny radio frequency (RF) microchip. When a gaming chip is placed in the betting circle, the antenna emits an electromagnetic field that enables it to read the value of the chip and relays the data to the table’s embedded computer and the back office system. Perfect Pay can recognise and read instantly 100 chips stacked 20 high in five columns. Earlier RFID table designs sometimes attempted to retrofit existing tables with RFID elements, or followed traditional guidelines for table design. In contrast,“We designed every aspect of the Perfect Pay table from the ground up to ensure the reliability and security of the RFID solution first and foremost,” says Stephen Moore. That said, tables are customised for each operator and look no different from other tables on the floor except for two small touch- screens embedded at the dealer position. If the dealer forgets to take one of the losers’ chips off the table, the system suspends the game. The dealer can’t go on until he or she takes the chip off the table. If the dealer tries to overpay, the tracking system suspends the game. If the dealer underpays, the system display records it. The players then have the confidence of knowing the game is fair. Foolproof “With this platform, not only will you catch the cheaters at the moment they cheat, you’ll also catch the counterfeiters at the moment they bet, rather than at the cage,” explains Stephen Moore. Using the secure platform of instant chip recognition, Perfect Pay’s specially developed software is able to mine the data produced by table play in order to report on game speed, bet mix, table occupancy, theoretical win, actual win and player betting patterns. In addition, electronic tableside displays supplied with Perfect Pay allow supervisors to see real-time information on the game, including cards dealt, hand totals and bets placed. For many Chinese players interested in detecting patterns of play in baccarat, knowing such information is as much about entertainment as it is about game transparency. From an operator’s viewpoint, having such information in automated formgives the house real control over its tablebusiness. Perfect Pay is also highly flexible, with configuration options for commission or no-commission play, minimum and maximum bets, and programmable limits on table exposure. “Our proprietary game system tracks every movement of everything on the table. By having all that information, we have perfect knowledge of the state of the game at all times,” explains Stephen Moore of Walker Digital. As well as allowing the casino management to know the perfect state of the game, the foolproof nature of Perfect Pay reduces the supervisory workload of pit managers and pit supervisors. Fewer supervisory hours worked means lower operator costs. In expensive labour markets such as Macau and Singapore, that can be a key contribution to building profitability. Operational insight Walker Digital’s senior management team all have backgrounds in casino operations. That means when they designed and commissioned Perfect Pay, they created the table they had always wanted as operators, rather than the table that ‘nearly’ ticked all the right boxes. Inotherwords, theybrought their skill to themarketplace, not their need. “There’s a saying in business:‘Measure what you wish to manage’,” says Mr Moore. “How do we measure someone betting millions and millions of dollars on table games? Should we have someone standing there with a clipboard writing it down? That’s what currently happens in VIP rooms in Macau. We say that as an industry we can do better than that. “If you have to calculate the commission on an odd number of millions of Hong Kong dollars using a clipboard and calculator, that can slow a game down by ten hands an hour. With our system, it’s done instantly. When people see it demonstrated, they love it.” One of the often-voiced fears of table fans and some operators is that technology introduced at tableside will change the fundamental character of the games players love. Walker Digital’s Perfect Pay baccarat finds just the right balance between operational and play optimisation and staying faithful to a game loved by many millions over many generations. “When you sit here and play, it’s regular baccarat,” states Stephen Moore. “The difference is, as an operator, you can do player ratings on the system, you can do perfect player tracking. If you want to award points for handle like you would with slot machines, you can do that.” Essentially, Perfect Pay baccarat is a triple live game with the reporting and analytical capability of a slot accounting system. With that kind of capability and that potential for return on investment, the issue for operators isn’t whether to switch to Perfect Pay. The issue is can they afford not to?