Inside Asian Gaming

July 2013 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 33 and technology in place that will take as much of the human decision-making out of the equation as possible,” says Mr Madding. In July 2009, USPCC moved from its Cincinnati, Ohio base, where it had been for more than a century, to a brand newpurpose built 570,000 square feet manufacturing plant across the river in neighbouring Kentucky—only a short distance from Cincinnati Airport. The company also invested US$30 million in new equipment for the plant. “We find that the more automation we have the better, and the fewer mistakes. Every time a human hand touches the product—and that includes in the casinos where the card packs go into the pre-shuffle room—the opportunity for something untoward to happen, such as a card going missing or collusion with someone wishing to cheat the system, is there,” adds Mr Madding. The Bee-Tek™ intelligent electronic baccarat shoe USPC’s card manufacturing process is fully automated. the marketplace. Also, you never want to be short of a key product that operates your business. So we feel that even as a secondary supplier into the marketplace, we would substantially grow market share just because of that simple level of support as a secondary supplier. But more importantly, we want to be a primary supplier. We think we’ve got the right product and the right service level to be able to do that.” The Bee-Tek shoe works exclusively with Bee brand playing cards.“There’s a reason for that,” explains Mr Slaughter. “That exclusivity ensures that you can have a much more secure game both for the casino and the player, simply because the technology is limited.” USPC’s cards are high-tech, sophisticated products that come in many formats for many settings, including hardwearingplastic and paper composites for poker rooms, as well as more traditional linen-finish paper cards for card-squeezing baccarat players in markets such as Macau and Las Vegas. USPC claims to be the only manufacturer that makes its own cardstock, scanning for imperfections and doing its own embossing, while other suppliers buy paper pre-embossed. Embossing the paper after printing means the surface of the card retains the slightly dimpled effect essential to allow a tiny cushion of air between each card. That, in turn, allows for more efficient card shuffling via machine, eliminating the risk of two cards being dealt simultaneously from the shoe. By contrast, when suppliers buy paper pre-embossed then print on it, the ink fills in the embossing. “The reason our cards work so well in shuffling machines is that the embossing gives a little bit of separation between each card in the pack—it effectively creates an air cushion. A very smooth (pre-embossed) card on the other hand tends to cause problems for shuffler machines. Sometimes more than one card can come out,” explains USPC International Casino Sales Director Scott Madding. Another key differentiating feature of the USPC card manufacturing process is that it is fully automated. “What we’ve been doing over the years, more from a security standpoint than anything else, is to get equipment FEATURES