The gambling establishments, from Las Vegas to Macau, are investing their money in the electronic chips that control the tables, in the poker chips, but also in the players. The suppliers are overcasting their sales to explode.
Two of the largest suppliers of equipment and tokens for US casinos, GPI and IOGC revealed their income for 2008. It generated the opportunity to observe a growing success for RFID solutions right in the middle of these institutions. There are already known the chips embedded in the chips given to the players, or the adoption of certain systems to monitor the abuse of the bartenders a little too generous who serve some doses of alcohol non regulatory, and are waiting to be rewarded with big tips. It seems that RFID (or Radio Frequency Identification, which is the technology that permits the identification of an object by means of a special label emitting some radio waves, attached or incorporated inside the object) takes more and more part of the investments the casinos make. Thus, the company GPI reveals that 40 percent of its revenue (about 9 million $) is from the sale of such chips to casinos worldwide. Half of its sales are still aimed at US facilities, and 40 percent reserved for the Macau market, the new Eldorado of games.
with significant growth figures, while these products accounted for less than 4 percents of the company’s sales in 2004, they now account for nearly one third of its commerce. “This force adoption of RFID products is a direct consequence of the increase in supply, its diversity, and offers more and more customized to ensure the security establishments of customers,”said Bodo Ischebeck, vice president of IOGC. The latter notes that customers are increasingly familiar with these technologies and now require real solutions for automated management of their game tables. It must be said that such systems greatly simplify the work of casino owners.
The electronic processors, installed on each table, are indeed able to read and recognize up to thousand RFID chips per second. This provides a visibility almost in real time of the situation at the game tables and of the players’ results. And, of course, the system can effectively fight against counterfeit or stolen chips. RFID allows indeed, among other things, the checking of tokens rather than one by one, in mass, through an analysis and automatic authentication. In addition, no need to manually count the earnings of players: their results are recorded automatically.