Macau casino operator MGM China Holdings Ltd has been using so-called ‘smart tables’ for its directly-managed VIP baccarat gambling business, as well as the premium mass and base mass business, affirmed a former senior manager who helped the company lead that market in the technology.
Graeme Croft (pictured), lately vice president of table games at MGM China, told GGRAsia that even in the boom days of traditional Macau VIP junkets, smart table technology for live-dealer junket baccarat had been “looked at” as an option, though not implemented in that segment.
The technology’s introduction had been “purely on the mass… and premium mass” business, but had also been implemented on “our premium direct, which is our [in-house] VIP,” live-dealer baccarat business, said Mr Croft.
He was talking to GGRAsia on the sidelines of the recent Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia casino trade exhibition and conference held in Macau.
The city’s casino industry is overwhelmingly a live-dealer baccarat business in terms of gross gaming revenue (GGR). Live-dealer mass-market baccarat and VIP baccarat combined accounted for 85.0 percent of all GGR last year in Macau, according to local government data. So when the Macau industry speaks of “smart tables” it is usually referring to such technology applied to baccarat tables.
Mr Croft noted: “It’s what you do with the data from smart tables that makes them ‘smart’. People need to talk more about that part.”
He confirmed that “100 percent” of MGM China live-dealer baccarat tables were currently ‘smart’. The company opted for the technology of Walker Digital Table Systems LLC, and its Perfect Pay Baccarat suite, using radio frequency identification technology (RFID).
Hubert Wang, president and chief operating officer of MGM China, said on the group’s first-quarter earnings call in May, that the firm has “at least several years of lead” in the implementation and use of smart tables versus its five market rivals.
Kenneth Feng, MGM China’s president and an executive director, had mentioned on the same call that the company “had this technology already in 2016”.
Mr Croft noted to GGRAsia: “Walker was the only thing [product] at that time, really worth having a look at,” due to its market lead in the field.
Benchmarking for dealers and managers
How MGM China has utilised the technology has evolved “significantly over the journey” of its implementation, said the specialist.
He added: “From our perspective, we believe that new [Macau] operators bringing in this technology will be great because they may see things through their lens a little bit different than us,” and that could be beneficial for the whole industry.
Examples of how MGM China has used the data from its smart tables is for benchmarking table operations. That was in terms of elements including not only dealer processes, but also management responsibilities such as player ratings.
Mr Croft stated: “Dealers are not robots, they’re human beings. But some of them are very, very efficient and some are not.”
With the data available via smart tables, “we can bring all of them [the dealers] up to a certain level of efficiency,” he added.
In terms of improving management’s own efficiency via smart tables, it helps the house understand the value of individual players.
“Before, it was all guesswork,” said Mr Croft. “Some players are worth a lot more than others. Some players play the exotic bets. So, there are different campaigns or offerings you can do for those types of players.”
Smart tables also mean that those “exotic” bets – ones with attractive player payouts but that can be accretive to house edge – can be added to the casino’s offer and handled by the smart table system via a firmware update, said Mr Croft.
“If you have an area of the floor that’s not performing that well, these side bets can be added” to the smart table capability, he noted.
In Macau, the city’s government has issued supportive comments on market-wide adoption of smart tables.
In the market over the years, there had been issues such as people trying to pass “fake chips” at tables, noted the veteran.
He stated: “I don’t work for the government, so I can’t speak for them. My guess is that they like the accountability” smart tables can offer.
