CASINO TIMES
Gamblers at Rivers and The Meadows are getting introduced to a new generation of casino chips.
Last week, Rivers introduced Western Pennsylvania's first "Rapid Roulette" table, which has a live dealer and wheel but uses electronic chips. Rivers also is installing a blackjack pit with i-Tables, which will feature live dealers and cards but use electronic chips.
The Meadows, the only casino in the state using chips with embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, has installed equipment that allows electronic tracking of bets on table games.
The Rapid Roulette table and i-Table blackjack do away with physical chips. Players trade their cash for credits that are displayed on a screen at their seat. They place their bets by touching the screen.
"The main advantage is convenience," said Corey Plummer, Rivers' vice president of gaming, said of the Rapid Roulette table. He said using electronic chips is faster, easier and more accurate than placing real chips on the layout -- especially for players who make as many as 30 bets per spin.
Electronic chips all but eliminate mistakes by dealers and players, he said.
"Sometimes, (roulette) players place chips where they wish they hadn't," he said. At a table where several players are rushing to place bets, correcting yourself might be difficult
"And when you win, it's straightforward," Plummer said. "It clearly identifies which (part) of your pattern paid off. And it all happens in an instant."
Rapid Roulette players can use 50-cent chips, while those at a traditional game can't go lower than $1. Like traditional roulette, Rapid Roulette is a double-zero game, giving the house a 5.26 percent edge.
Electronic payouts and betting also speed up the game. Shuffle Master Inc., maker of Rapid Roulette, advertises that it allows for 50 to 60 spins per hour; at a regular table with six players, casino managers are happy with 35 games per hour.
Plummer doesn't foresee electronic chips eliminating the real thing.
"There's still a lot of players that like shuffling their cheques around the table and having something tangible to walk away with," he said.
The Meadows' RFID technology ensures that players are rated accurately for comps such as free meals and special promotions, said Sean Sullivan, vice president and general manager.
Each Meadows chip contains an RFID tag that includes its value and a serial number. It's similar to the RFID tags used in retail packaging to track inventory and combat shoplifting.
The Meadows recently began using equipment that reads table game bets much like slot bets are tracked on a player's card. At a blackjack table, a scanner underneath each betting circle measures the wager. Before each hand, the dealer pushes a button to record players' bets.
Instead of estimating a player's average bet and number of hands played, floor supervisors can know exactly.
"If we promise rewards to people for their (table game) play, like we do with slots, they want to know that we're getting their play accurately measured," Sullivan said.
"For years and years, we've all heard 'you're under-rating me, you're not giving me enough.' They (now) have a comfort, like in slots, where it's actually measured to the penny."
Casinos base comps, short for "complimentaries," on a formula involving a player's average bet, time played, the house advantage for the game and how well you play, Sullivan said. Floor supervisors, who keep track of several tables at once, are responsible not only for rating players but also for resolving disputes, watching for potential cheating and keeping the games running smoothly.
While supervisors are skilled in assessing a player's action, manual ratings could lead to under-comping and over-comping, especially when tables are full, Sullivan said.
"Sometimes other players see favoritism to a person that's getting more aggressive ratings or maybe seeing more comps," he said. "(With RFID), it's fair and consistent across the board. It's accurate. Nobody's underrated and no one's going to be overrated."
RFID technology prevents counterfeiting of chips and makes it difficult to "cap" or "pinch" bets -- surreptitiously adding or subtracting chips after the hand is decided