Angel Playing Cards has become the biggest supplier of playing cards to the global casino industry thanks to its leading reputation for protecting baccarat games
The vast majority of casino revenue in Asia derives from baccarat. And with the proliferation of high-rolling Chinese players over the past few years, major casinos in the US and elsewhere are also becoming increasingly reliant on the game.
Baccarat is big money, and in order to safeguard the integrity of the games, most of the world’s baccarat tables employ state-of-theart electronic baccarat shoes rather than regular ones. The biggest supplier of these is Japan’s Angel Playing Cards Co., Ltd, which has shipped around 8,000 of its ANGEL EYE shoes, giving it a roughly 90% share of the global electronic baccarat shoe market.
The ANGEL EYE was developed specifically in response to customer requests for a product to prevent “card switching”—a cheating method where a player covertly swaps a live card on the table with a concealed one. Angel began development of the ANGEL EYE in 2002, and the following year released the ANGEL EYE I, capable of not only thwarting card switching, but also reducing dealer mistakes and detecting counterfeit cards.
According to Yasushi Shigeta, Angel’s President and CEO, the first generation ANGEL EYE “was designed to be attached onto a normal baccarat shoe. The rank and suit of the dealt cards and the game result was confirmed, and could be shown on an external monitor.” Angel thus paved the way for the development of detailed baccarat results displays, which help feed the appetite for baccarat among Chinese players who look for patterns in the results to predict future outcomes.
Angel took the feedback and experience from the first generation shoe to create ANGEL EYE II, released in 2005. “The shoe integrated the card dealing compartment with the central processing unit, and enabled the results to be calculated and displayed through builtin LED lights and an LCD monitor on the same device,” explains Mr Shigeta. “The integration allowed the shoe to become more secure, with no risk of hacking during data transmission, and forgery of game results becoming difficult.
“The market response to the ANGEL EYE II was overwhelmingly positive, with much feedback from casinos informing us that instances of card switching decreased dramatically; and miscalculation and mis-payouts by dealers due to wrong interpretation of results decreased dramatically.
“The subsequent generations of ANGEL EYE, such as ANGEL EYE II-EX , ANGEL EYE III, etc., added a new security feature called the “Casino Reference Code” function which enables the detection and flagging of any cards with incorrect codes. Currently, most Macau casinos utilize the ANGEL EYE with this function.”
Striving for 100% accuracy – Angel Playing Cards Co., Ltd President and CEO Yasushi Shigeta
Numbers Game
Given the huge volumes of play on Asian baccarat tables, the accuracy of shoes and cards is critical, and Angel strives to achieve a 100% error-free record. As Mr Shigeta observes, “If an electronic shoe commits an error once every 1,000 cards, it works out to three to four errors every day on each electronic baccarat shoe. Even if the frequency of errors drops to one in every 10,000 cards, there would still be an error once every three days on each electronic shoe. That kind of frequency would negate the merits of implementing an electronic shoe, and so that level of accuracy [one error out of 10,000] is not sufficient.”
Underlying the smooth operation of the ANGEL EYE is Angel’s playing cards. “In order for the ANGEL EYE to perform stably and accurately, it is important the cards used in the shoe are produced to Angel’s usual exacting standards,” points out Mr Shigeta. “The precision of card cutting and code printing is critical. Angel conducts 100% inspection for both the cut and the code print. Striving for our goal of 100% accuracy, all manufacturing processes of ANGEL EYE, from assembly to final configuration as well as inspection before shipment, are conducted in our factory in Japan. Operation checks and inspection before shipment are repeated many times. Inspection and compatibility testing is done using cards with the actual specification as the cards to be used in the casinos.”
The value of Angel’s thorough inspection checks were highlighted last year when another manufacturer failed to shuffle a batch of what were supposed to be pre-shuffled cards delivered to the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, leading to the casino losing US$1.5 million to savvy players over 41 hands of cards dealt in sequence.
Angel also stands ready to provide support for its products around the world. “ANGEL EYE shoes delivered to casinos are serviced by our professional technicians, who monitor the shoes to maintain reliability through regular service and maintenance work,” says Mr Shigeta. “Furthermore, in order to ensure security, even the casinos’ staff are prohibited from disassembling the components of ANGEL EYE shoes. All repairs or upgrades, including software, are managed and conducted by Angel staff only.”
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