Smart Chip Trays

The table was hot, Hot, HOT at Darrell Ratliff's table, and he and the other gamblers were on a roll. Until the Pit swapped dealers, did a chip count, and stopped the game while everyone waited and Waited and WAITED for a refill. When play resumed, he recalls, "(T)hings turned—the energy at the table was gone..." So, he invented the Smart Chip Tray hat allows casinos to keep a real-time count of all the chips at a table game. Story here.

It shows both the total of chips in the tray and (apparently) value of chips in the Dealer toke box, all in real time. Data is available to Pit on their game-management displays and to security. "Strange" activity can trigger a security alert. The article states, "In today's high-tech world, it is more of a challenge than ever for casino operators to stay ahead of people developing new ways to cheat." (Maybe, but sounds a bit extreme to me.)

Mr. Ratliff thinks casinos using his system will never have to stop a hot table in the future. But, many of us have experienced casinos successful efforts to cool a hot table, and casinos will probably continue to do it in the future, regardless of whether or not they have this system. The Smart Chip Tray will probably alert them more quickly than tables without the Smart Chip Tray.

Ratliff says he is working to get it approved in Nevada and Colorado, but casinos here and abroad have expressed interest. Stay tuned. Coming soon to a casino near all of us.

Effect on ratholing?

Presumably the smart tray would require all the chips to have RFID, making every chip trackable.

EDIT: The article says it works with any existing chips. How it can tell a $1 chip from a $500 chip without RFID I have no idea.

Quote: Deucekies

Presumably the smart tray would require all the chips to have RFID, making every chip trackable.

EDIT: The article says it works with any existing chips. How it can tell a $1 chip from a $500 chip without RFID I have no idea.

Quote: from their website

The tray contains measuring devices within each tube inside the tray which carry an individually programmed monetary value.

I assume laser measures how full each tube is. Each turn only has one denomination of chips in them.

There is also a different kind of system that uses multiple cameras along the edge of the rack to watch the player's chips. It knows the value based on the edge colorings. No RFID needed. It adds up the stacks in the betting circles to see how much the player is betting.

VERY accurate ratings result. Not sure if it can watch for rat-holeing, but if I recall correctly, it was tracking bets, side bets, tokes, wins and losses.

I saw it demoed at multiple G2E shows. (Or maybe Cutting Edge?)

The distributor for the system with the multiple cameras is ARB. They are a Canadian company.