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Note to Gamblers: You're Being Watched and Tracked

Experts at the Global Gaming Expo confirmed Monday what many people assume: If you're in a casino, you're not only being watched, you're being tracked.

While panelists attending a seminar at the Las Vegas Convention Center urged the audience of gaming industry personnel to demand more space and money for surveillance, player-tracking experts promised new ways to bring in money by creating reward-based player loyalty.

Even though the two groups appear to be on opposite sides -- with player-tracking technology aimed at drawing more players into the casino and surveillance technology ensuring that players don't take advantage of the casino -- both achieve their goals the same way: by watching the players.

Surveillance experts rallied the audience to demand more equipment, space, new technology, a proper library and whatever else their departments need to run efficiently.

"When it comes to the design of a surveillance room, the surveillance room (employees) really doesn't have any input," said Gary Powell, a senior consultant with the private security firm API.

Often surveillance rooms are designed and built before a surveillance manager is hired, acknowledged Derk Boss, vice president of surveillance for American Casino & Entertainment Properties.

"Don't accept the plan, you have to fight every day for more space," he told the crowd of more than 75 at G2E. The expo opens today and runs through Thursday, although a separate G2E institute held several training seminars Monday.

The panel also urged gaming company surveillance specialists to go beyond regulatory standards. Using examples such as tape storage, the panel said casinos should keep tapes longer than the usual five to seven days.

"I would prefer to have 14 days; certainly in the cages you don't want five to seven days. Checks don't even clear in that time," Boss said.

The panel also offered suggestions on getting the chief financial officer to agree to budget supplements for a surveillance department.

First, try if possible to have expenses come out of the construction budget, not the operational budget, they said. The panel explained that construction budgets usually come from a bank loan and are therefore easier to increase while increases in departmental spending usually result in another department having to cut employees.

Secondly, create a database entry for each incident, whether a surveillance employee helps an old woman across the street or workers identify players using unauthorized techniques to their advantage in the casino.

"Think of it as a return on investment," said Joe McDonald, the panel moderator and council vice chairman of ASIS International. "When they try to cut your budget, you can outline where the money is going and ask them which service they want to do without."

The panel admitted that because experienced personnel are not readily available, training is fundamental to the overall effectiveness of any surveillance operation.

For example, the group urged the audience to keep tapes that capture undesirable behavior for future training. Keeping an up-to-date library of offenses and protocols is essential, they said.

"The surveillance room can't watch and protect the liability of the slot department if they don't know what the procedures are," Powell said.

"It's a very expensive lesson to learn," Boss said. "We've all been beaten, but we save the tape so we know what it looks like. These guys train for 20 years on one move and we want our guys, who were just trained, to recognize it."

Player tracking, on the other hand, is aimed at players who think they can beat the system and end up spending lots of time and money learning the games.

The panel, which was made up of European casino aficionados, appeared before an overflow room of people wanting to know how to turn a "visiting player" into a "real player."

Identifying player frequency, average bet, game preferences, play duration and ranking are just some of the considerations that allow casinos to target marketing and promotional freebies.

The panel explained that creating a player ranking system not only helps a casino identify its most important players, but it can be used as a device to increase player loyalty. Notifying the player of his status and how much more he needs to play in order to reach the next level creates another motivation for the player to keep playing.

"They want to achieve the next level," said Alex van den Brul, sales manager for business systems company Atronic Systems.

Knowing how much the player spends and loses is key in the evaluation of how much to compensate.

Player tracking involves knowing when and how to compensate players with points, bonus jackpots, free meals, and so on, but it also helps casinos decide on slot placement and player service.

Van den Brul said knowing a player's "behavior" is essential in player tracking. The casino wants to keep clean data on players' choice of machine, preferred playing location, and even details down to players' preference of screen color. He cautions that casinos must be sensitive to players' superstitions.

For example Asians won't play on machines with the number four, but they seem to like machines with 888 on them," van den Brul said. "Know their habits, do they like drinks with ice or without ice."

As technology enables greater database sorting, player tracking becomes more specific. Casinos are able to link player preferences, behavior and motivations to increased play time and profits. Advances in technology will enable casinos to attract players who aren't physically visiting their casinos and provide them with the same rewards they would receive if they came to the casino.

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