The Context

Baccarat was a significant part of this market, accounting for about 80% of Macau’s gaming revenue in that period. Therefore, baccarat revenue in Macau alone would be roughly $18.4 billion.

The Problem

In Macau in 2010, approximately $35 million dollars of lost revenue was due to dealer mispay's and payment counterfeit chips.

The Objective

Research, strategize and design an solution to help reduce or even eliminate dealer mispay's and payment on counterfeit chips. If successful this could save casino's in Macau over 30 million dollars of lost revenue yearly.

Empathize

Understand what attributes are most likely to...

  • Current issues that are causing table games to lose money?
  • What is the goal of the casino management?
  • What are the players expecting?

Exploratory Data Analysis

  • Player interviews
  • Market research

Player Interviews

  • Players do not trust new technology.
  • We need to hide the technology from view.

Conceptualise

We needed to summarize what we have learned

  • Understand key pain points, wants and needs.
  • Classify all insights gathered.
  • Present our synthesis to stakeholders.

Jump into secondary research to form our product strategy and experience.

  • Create affinity maps.
  • Prioritized customer pain points, wants and needs.
  • Presented the isights to stakeholders.

Affinity Map

  • How will players react to new technology?
  • How can we add these upgrades without effecting the original game?

Design

The product design would require both new hard and software.

  • How were we going to utilize RFID technology in the chips to facilitate accurate chip detection and accounting?
  • How can we communicate effectively to the dealer the status of the game in progress, and how much each player has bet as well as any payouts that need to be made.

After much trial and error we managed to achieve those requirements by.

  • Embedding RFID sensors within the table that where capable of accurately detecting bets with chip stacks as high as 20 chips.
  • The only additions to the standard baccarat table, that players could, see where 2 small dealer screens which gave the dealer important information about the status of the game and payouts.

Design System

  • RFID sensors embedded within table.
  • Dealer screens show accurate accounting.
  • Most technology is hidden from view.

Added Benefits for Dealers

  • Accurate accounting of bets.
  • Calculates realtime payouts.
  • Tracks game history for audits.

Outcomes

We successfully launched several tables on casino floors in Macau. Where our Perfect Pay RFID Table Network have been shown to:

  • Eliminate counterfeit bets.
  • Eliminate dealer mispays.
  • Saving the casino's millions in lost revenue.
Macau Launch Team