Question of the Day - 03 July 2018

They’re here.

Bellagio has been the first mover, offering live roulette and baccarat in electronic-table-game (ETG) form, although we might have expected the Venetian and/or Palazzo to be the initial installer, given Adelson’s auspicious deployment of ETG stadiums in Pennsylvania, 

The Las Vegas Sands CEO has also used them to considerable effect in Macao, where table games are severely limited by government edict. Since the dealer position in the stadium counts as one table, no matter how many player substations there are, one "table" can essentially perform the same function as 150. Smooth move, Shel. (You’re forgiven for Sands’ having stonewalled us on this story.)

The prevalent model in the marketplace is the Dynasty ETG stadium, developed by International Game Technology. The math works like this: One dealer on a conventional baccarat table can deal 35 hands an hour. Dealing two tables of electronic baccarat raises the hand count to 70 per hour or more. Multiply that by as few as 14 players and — presto! — you’re dealing 2,100 hands an hour (or so IGT claims). Consider, then, that ETG stadiums can service as many as 150 players at a time and you’ve got a real money-spinner on your hands. Not only do the dealers play two games at once, you can view (and wager on) both on your touchscreen. Ditto roulette and baccarat. Resorts Atlantic City, which offers ETG roulette, baccarat, and blackjack, claims that all three games can be played simultaneously, but we’ve not seen any supporting documentation. Side bets can also be made, on top of however many hands you’re playing.

(Dynasty offers both single- and double-zero roulette, as well as sic bo, popular with Asian American players, although we have yet to see a sic bo stadium.)

The layout is like a traditional table game, supersized. The dealer is front and center and dozens of individual player stations — more comfortable than those at a standard blackjack or roulette game — fan out over a wide area. Sands Bethlehem has two of these. The 150-seat baccarat/roulette stadium proved so popular that a 44-seat blackjack stadium was installed to complement it. Sands spokeswoman Julia Corwin told a reporter, “Live-dealer electronic table games are popular, because they allow guests to play at their own pace and in a less intimidating environment.”

We can’t account for the lack of more adopters in Atlantic City, Pennsylvania (where Sands crushes the competition in table game revenue), and Nevada. As for other states, we suspect that regulatory approvals — always a time-consuming process — are the impediment. However, given the blend between video-game appeal and low cost of labor, we predict the pace of ETGs will quicken and that this technological genie is out of its bottle to stay.