Question of the Day - 28 May 2025

We answered this question in a two-part QoD a couple of years ago. Here, we boil down those answers into this one.

The consensus among pundits and experts is that the casinos haven't quite figured out what the electronic table games (ETG) are yet. Are they tables? If so, play on them should be rated. But since they're generally not supervised by floor personnel, who would do it? Are they machines? If so, then they should award players club points. Apparently, the casinos think they're neither. Or at best fall somewhere in between. 

According to some sources around the industry, wherever the revenue goes, that's how these games are classified. Dealerless games like bubble craps or roulette where the ball is shot around the wheel by machinery are classified as slot machines. Reward points on thbose games should be accumulated the same as they are on slots, usually based solely on coin-in amounts. 

Dealer-assist games are a little more complicated, because the machines are operated by the table-game department, but if something goes wrong, slot attendants and technicians come to take care of the problem. Usually, with the dealer assist games, the revenue goes to the table-game department and the slot technicians are there for emergencies.

Sometimes the casino makes it clear that the EDG don't award points, sometimes not. To us, that's a big failing on the part of the casinos. It misses a major opportunity to find and reinvest in quality players.

A big part of it is that ETG players fall through a major crack between the slot and table-game departments, so neither has carved out a reasonable reinvestment strategy for these players. Meanwhile, these electronic games are getting more and more popular, so casinos can get away with not doling out loyalty points. Why would they? 

Of course, they should. As this question states, ETG games are essentially the same as table games, with one glaring exception: They're much faster. There are at least two times the number of decisions per hour on the single-player ETG game versus the traditional table games. Thus, these ETG crap players deserve even more points (or comps or cashback or whatever reward currency table-game departments use) than traditional table players, who might typically earn a reinvestment of 10%-20% of their theoretical loss.

The last time we ran this question, the comments indicated that very few, if any, ETGs awarded any kind of points. Has that changed? Is you know of any that do, please let us all know.