Inside Asian Gaming

July 2011 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 35 M acau’s gaming regulator would like casino operators to drop the use of very low-denomination slot games, Inside Asian Gaming has learned. Several of Macau’s six gaming concessionaires have been advised by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) that games with denominations of less than ten Hong Kong cents per line are ‘non-compliant’. But two-cent and five-cent games are currently common in Macau and have been for a long time. IAG understands that the regulator has not gone as far as to issue a formal directive to ban the two-cent and five-cent games, but is currently issuing informal guidance that it would like to see their use discontinued. Some sources suggest the DICJ’s thinking on the move is essentially administrative— that because the lowest denomination of coin in Macau is ten cents, any slot machine using a denomination lower than 10 cents will have payouts that include a fraction of 10 cents. From IAG ’s own experience, one of Macau’s casino operators has a policy of rounding down slot payouts that involve a fraction of ten cents, while the others offering low denomination play round up. For example, with a pay out of HK$10.05, one operator will only pay HK$10, while the others will pay HK$10.10. The loss of a notional five cents in the first example might not seem too unfair for players, but when rounding down is performed across many thousands of slot transactions across a whole year, the amount involved adds up. Other sources wonder why—if the rounding issue is the reason for the informal DICJ advice on denominations below ten cents—theDICJisonlyactingnowaftermany years of allowing the practice to continue. Those sources suggest the key reason for seeking to phase out low-denomination play is that the DICJ—in consultation with the Macau government—is concerned that low denomination games may encourage low- income and pathological gamblers to play. The headline low denomination draws in the players as good value, but the cost soon stacks up because of the number of lines that can be played at any one time. Most modern slot games typically have the option of many tens of lines per game. Thus, a five-cent per line game played with a maximum bet of 20 credits over 50 lines actually costs HK$50 (US$6.42) to play every spin when maximum bettingstrategy isused. Given the favourable house edge in slot play (inMacau sometimes as little as 85% of stake money goes back to the players in prizes), the slot player’s rate of loss per hour when employing maximum betting strategy on even low denomination Penny Dropped Macau’s gaming regulator advises casinos to drop ultra-low denomination slot games Low rolling—not encouraged by the Macau authorities?