Vegas Casino
Places Bet on RFID Technology
When
casino mogul Steve Wynn opens the doors to his new $2.7 billion uber-resort
Wynn Las Vegas in April, it will truly be the hottest ticket in town.
Although the resort is not scheduled to open until April, rumor has it
that it is already booked solid for the following several months.
The casino resort boasts an 18-hole championship golf course, a bronze
tower housing 2700 plush guest rooms, and even a private lake and mountain. Yet, it is something that the guests may not even notice that
is of the most interest to the gaming world.
Wynn
Las Vegas is debuting a new type of high-tech casino betting chip that is
designed to deter card counting, counterfeiting, and various other cheating
methods. Although as of this
writing the author has not seen the chips in question, according to all
accounts they look just like any other casino chip.
The technology behind the chips is both simple and genius.
The chips work by electronically emitting secret serial numbers.
The casino’s security equipment is linked to the computer systems
throughout the property, identifying legitimate chips, while detecting fakes. “Security-wise it will be huge for us,” said Rick Doptis,
Wynn’s Vice President of table gaming.
The
technology behind the chips is known as radio frequency identification, or
RFID. Although its use in casino
chips is new, RFID has been used for several years to track livestock, pay
tolls, and enable employee security passes.
Wal-Mart has led its implementation in the retail sector, while
libraries across the nation are beginning to use it to speed checkout and help
with re-shelving.
Many casino
executive insiders believe that RFID holds the potential to change the way
they operate table games, including, craps, blackjack and roulette, over the
next four or five years. At the
very least, the counterfeiting of casino chips would be made infinitely
harder. Last year, one unnamed
casino in Reno lost over $26,000 in such a scheme.
The RFID technology would allow dealers and cashiers to see if the
value on the chips presented to them is legitimate.
The new
high-tech chips will also help the casinos to rate their players.
Today, casinos generally have special staff to observe who the good
players are, who is dead money, and how much a particular gambler wagers.
Casinos will now be far better able to track players gaming trends in
regards to their playing ability and monies wagered. The casinos generally
reserve the most enticing rewards for their most "valuable" players;
those that bet and lose the most. These
are the players the casino would like to return often.
The price of
the chips is not cheap; Wynn is spending $2 million on them, about double the
cost of regular ones. This does
not include the security upgrades necessary to monitor and track the chips,
which raises the costs significantly higher.
With the ultimate cost being around $8000 per table (just for the chips
and scanners), many casinos are not running to implement the new technology.
Las Vegas rightfully
considers itself as the center of the world in regards to casino
gambling, and thus often takes a “wait and see” approach to unproven
technology. Aside from the
significant costs involved, there is another concern; privacy.
Wherever it is utilized, RFID seems to generate objections from some
consumer activists, who worry that the technology will give governments and
corporations too much power to pry into people's lives.
Yet, in reality few casino patrons have any real expectation of
privacy, knowing full well that the casino cameras may in fact outnumber the
showgirls. As with a lot of
gambles in Las Vegas, it looks like we will have to wait and see, but it seems
that RFID technology is here to stay.
Matthew Alan Freer, February 2005
