Leading industry supplier Angel says it now has the capability to expand its smart table offering to more than 90% of the casino floor after unveiling its roulette, blackjack and Sic Bo tables at last week’s G2E Asia trade show in Macau.
Angel’s baccarat solution is already utilized by operators across Asia including the Las Vegas Sands portfolio in Macau and Singapore, Solaire in the Philippines and SkyCity in New Zealand, among others.
However, Bryan Jenkins, Managing Director of Angel Australasia Pty Ltd, told Inside Asian Gaming that expanding its hybrid technology to a raft of other table games has become reality with full coverage also on the horizon.
“We have now covered 90% of the floor and we accommodate the game variants including the expanding range of side bets and so on because our smart table is camera assisted AI software based,” Jenkins explained.
“Our blackjack technology can accommodate poker derivative games like your Texas Hold’ems, four-card pokers and so on. Once you get the technology basis right, you can move that over to other games as well.
“We’d like to do a little bit more with Sic Bo which has its own peculiarities, but we think we would now cover probably 90% of the floor and maybe even more – maybe 95%. And [full coverage] is the ultimate goal.”
Angel’s roulette solution is one the company is particularly proud of. Recognizing the added layer of complexity that a roulette table can provide, Angel uses RFID beneath the felt to identify chips in play – similar to baccarat – then applies video-assisted AI to not only identify the winning number but whether each bet applies to a straight-up number, split, corner or street. By quickly calculating payouts, the company estimates the payout process can save up to three minutes per game on a busy table.
Angel smart table technology is applied differently on blackjack, with cameras identifying bets placed, cards and card movements, and hand movements to confirm the result and correct payouts.
“They all use the same technologies but in different combinations, different collaborations if you like,” Jenkins explains. “That’s also where we see that what we have produced is not only relevant for today but represents a strong base for the development of what a casino technology platform for table games and casino should be in the future.”
A new addition to Angel’s team as a consultant is Laurent Fresnel, Founder & CEO of Syntrii and former Group Chief Technology & Innovation Officer for Star Entertainment Group.
Bringing an operator’s eye to Angel’s evolution, Fresnel describes the expansion of the company’s hybrid technology as an “inflection point” for the industry that only promises to accelerate in the years ahead.
“For me, with the deployment of AI, you’re now seeing full operation across all the games,” he says. “With Angel now launching blackjack, the iteration of different games will start going a lot faster because the Angel smart table technology pattern you see everywhere is using camera assisted AI as the driving force for now and the future. It’s just about building the logic. So, now the iteration of coverage of the game for the casino is going to increase and it will become crucial for operators to start looking more and more at AI.”
Angel’s roulette and blackjack smart table technology is currently going through operator testing with the expectation being that it will hit casino floors within this year.
However, the company sees this as just the tip of the technology iceberg. Its latest addition, already approved by regulators in Singapore and New Zealand, is Bet Attribution – a facial recognition tool described by Jenkins as a “game changer” because it will allow players to place a bet on any gaming table and have their play fully tracked.
“We have always believed that if you can confirm all aspects of the game as correct then you can actually rely on all of the data going forward,” Jenkins says. “There is a lot of technology out there that is very much ‘bits and pieces’ whereas from what I can see, the only technology that can be proven is our hybrid technology, because if you don’t have that camera-assisted AI, you cannot identify all the aspects of the game to close that loop.
“I think that’s a very important factor and it’s very important for us.”
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