Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | 82 G2E ASIA 2013 New colors—Matsui’s Antique Stone Series T he Matsui group, headquartered in Tokyo, specializes in the manufacture and sale of gaming chips and layouts (both wool and synthetic). Its subsidiary serving Asian markets outside Japan and Korea, Macau-based Matsui Asia Ltd, is part of a global network also spanning Europe and the Americas. Its chips and layouts are used by more than 700 casinos in over 100 countries, and in addition to Macau, the group has sales offices in Manchester, England, Moscow, Las Vegas and Seoul. All of Matsui’s manufacturing takes place at facilities it has 100% ownership of, ensuring its supply chain is fully secured. The company prides itself on its competitive pricing and speedy response to customers’ needs. Matsui’s high-quality chips feature a host of optional security features and are licensed in several gaming jurisdictions, notably having gained approval from Singapore’s famously fastidious Casino Regulatory Authority, with a visit by the CRA to Matsui’s production facility in Korea part of the rigorous screening process.. Inside Asian Gaming spoke to Shigeki Machida, MD of Matsui Asia Ltd, about the company’s latest product developments and plans for regional expansion. IAG : What innovations have you made in the past year to make your chips more secure? Mr Machida : Recently we have released a few significant developments of security features for Matsui chips. The first relates to the “MG EYE” [pronounced “em-gee eye”] chip security feature, one of our very unique security features. We have already sold millions of chipswiththisfeature.Itcanbeincorporated in the decal—the center printed part of the chip. While this security feature is very reliable and offered at a very reasonable cost, we received feedback that the speed of verification was an issue because it took about one second to check each chip with the previous tester device. In response to the feedback, we have developed a new device which we call “MG EYE Scanner”. With this device, chips incorporating MG EYE security can be verified even more quickly. It has an LCD monitor which can show the result and can work just like a traditional UV light on gaming tables. This will be a great enhancement of technology for existing users and new users of MG EYE security chips. Another very important development which we made is “MG EYE 2”. This is a new security feature for Matsui chips. While MG EYE is incorporated in the decal part of chips, the MG EYE 2 is put in the plastic part. The security material which is specially developed for our chips will be incorporated in the plastic part of the chips when injected, and it reacts to the tester which is only available from our company. Both MG EYE and MG EYE 2 are not visible to the naked eye and can only be verified by a reader which is supplied exclusively by Matsui. Have you carried out any interesting customization jobs for customers recently? We have just launched a new gaming chip product, “Premier Decal Chip”. The original idea for this product came from one of our customers who wanted their high value chips in our standard decal chip format rather than traditional plaque style. We have various chip diameters from 39mm to 50mm but the customer wanted it bigger and in a unique style. So we developed this rectangle-shaped decal chip which looks like a plaque but with a standard decal. This Premier Decal Chip is a very unique chip Expanded Palette Matsui has been busy enhancing the security features and aesthetics of its gaming chips, which have been gaining a growing presence in the region