For a long time, I’ve been saying that the best way to make money in a casino is to invent a product or method that decreases labor costs–casino execs will line up to buy it. For some reason, people asking me for “lucky numbers” at keno don’t seem to appreciate that insight so much.
But some people are thinking along those lines. A company is hoping to get its dealer-less poker tables into Nevada casinos soon, a move that would revolutionize the industry in some ways, but only be a continuation of a 20-year trend in others. From the LV Sun:
Televised tournaments and pop culture references have made poker a player favorite, but the games, in which players bet against one another, don’t make much money for the house.
A startup company from North Carolina is trying to change that with electronic poker tables called PokerPros that don’t require live dealers. These tables, which debuted in 2005 but aren’t yet offered in Nevada, have big implications for the casino industry.
Because electronic tables play faster than traditional games, they can increase what the casino takes from the pot over time, yielding a profit that more resembles that of other, more lucrative table games. They save labor costs by replacing dealers with a computer that deals electronic cards to players on a flat screen much like Internet poker games. And these games don’t require shuffling machines and aren’t subject to human error.
Surprisingly, the tables – developed with input from poker pro and casino executive Lyle Berman – have been a hard sell for Nevada’s profit-driven casinos.
That’s because the table’s advantages come at an uncomfortable time for Strip casinos. Empowered by a controversial tip-sharing policy at Wynn Las Vegas, dealers at other properties are organizing under the Transport Workers Union, or at least exploring that prospect.
Executives won’t comment publicly about the union’s influence, but they privately acknowledge that abandoning live dealers for electronic versions would inflame an already-skittish workforce.
I’m sure the video poker tables will eventually catch on, but it would be much more fun if they used robots instead. At least if they were these kinds of robots:
A little bit of the 4th doctor is never a bad thing.