Inside Asian Gaming

MArch 2016 inside asian gaming 25 Tech Talk Staff management In addition to monitoring staff punctuality via swipe card login, video- analyzing software in the VL-Focus main unit can measure the number of hands a dealer is getting through each hour. “Normally, a casino might review a dealer’s performance once a month by surveilling him or her for a quarter hour and then multiplying by four to get the hourly figure. With our system dealers can assess themselves hour-by-hour,” says McClellan. He reckons a five percent increase in efficiency, or two extra hands per hour, via such self-coaching is a realistic target. When attained, he says the gains would typically pay for the system in 6 months. Conversely, if reviewed footage shows a dealer underpaying or overpaying a player, a pit manager has the ability to use the system to submit an incident report. Too many such reports in a given month might call for mentoring, or identify a specific dealer as a liability. Analytics Lastly, information from every VL-Focus equipped table in a casino can be fed into a central computer, digested and analyzed for weekly or monthly reports. In this way, a casino manager can fine-tune variables like limits, staffing levels for different shifts and tables allocated to different games or smoking/non-smoking, for optimized overall resource allocation. Further capabilities now under development include card recognition and chip recognition, which will enhance VL-Focus’ value as a tool for analyzing play and tracking cheats. While facial recognition technology may work for biometric passports, McLellan says the technology is still far away from being useful for his purposes. With Asia in mind, McClellan has finished an application for baccarat; to analyze how long it takes a dealer to stage a table, bring out the cards and finish a round. The earliest version of VL-Focus was created in the middle of the last decade by combining the ideas of two men. McClellan, who was a young pit technician at Detroit’s Motor City Casino, had the idea of putting a sensor in a discard rack to track cycles of play. While there he met up with Perry Stasi, an executive who had been in the business for 25 years, who wanted signs to display advertisements to players during downtime. Development really took off five years ago, with the idea of incorporating cameras for more sophisticated monitoring and analysis. After a six-month pilot test, the first mature VL-Focus units were installed in US casinos in mid-2014. Since then sales have mushroomed. Today they are on over 2,200 tables in 36 North American casinos. The most recent installation was 155 units in Atlantic City’s Borgata. While few customers opt to buy every module, McClellan says the most popular functions are dealer analytics and messaging (for drink requests, hosts and so forth). Having recently taken-on Eurocoin as its distributor in Europe and Africa, VisuaLimits is now gearing up for a push into the Asian market. MGM is an existing customer in the US, which may help the company crack into the Macau market, given MGM’s presence in the continent’s gambling capital. In any case, Macau’s casinos are under extreme pressure to improve efficiency, given the limited table quotas they are being given by the government. “There are only two ways to improve profitability: manage limits and manage dealer performance,” says McClellan. “We can help casinos do that. It’s their quickest way to earn more money.” Further capabilities now under development include card recognition and chip recognition, which will of course enhance VL-Focus’ value as a tool for analyzing play and tracking cheats. With Asia in mind, McClellan has finished an application for baccarat; to analyze how long it takes a dealer to stage a table, bring out the cards and finish a round.