Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | July 2010 6 E lectronic table games have long been touted by equipment manufacturers as the casino equivalent of the philosophers’ stone. In Western culture, the philosophers’ stone was a legendary alchemical substance, supposedly capable of turning base metals, especially lead, into gold. The magical allure of automated or semi automated table games—particularly in the Macau market—is their supposed ability to deliver play on much wider margins than traditional live table games because they don’t needexpensiveandscarce local dealers to run them. In the first quarter of this year, the median monthly wage for a table dealer in Macau was MOP13,000 (US$1,620). That’s actually higher than themonthly wages paid to dealers in the new Singapore integrated resorts. Dealer salaries at Marina Bay Sands average S$1,800 (US$1,293), according to industry analysts, while at Resorts World Sentosa the average is reportedly S$2,000 (US$1,437). There’s just one problem. There is as yet little consistent, strong evidence that players in Macau are willing to migrate en masse from live table games to electronic ones, or to view them as a viable alternative if live tables are too full. At Chinese New Year, most players would rather crowd four-deep around traditional live tables with minimum bets pushed up as high as HK$300 than take their chances with the automated baccarat tables. Against the tide There are some notable exceptions to this general aversion to electronic table games. Aruze’s Lucky Sic Bo has proven a hit on mass floors in Macau as compared to the traditional hand-shaken dice version. That’s in part because of the clever ‘bash button’ feature that allows players the illusion of control once the automated dice shaking has commenced. It could also be because in China’s relatively low-trust culture, players Electric Dreams Macau’s cap on live table numbers could be a golden opportunity for the electronic variety Lucky for some—Aruze Lucky Sic Bo