RFID Casino Chips

scubacuda writes "Could casinos be the next Gillette or Wal-Mart? New Scientist and others report that casinos could soon start using RFID tags to spot counterfeits and thefts, and also to monitor the behaviour of gamblers. Embedded RFID tags should make the chips much harder to counterfeit, and placing tag readers at staff exits could cut down on theft by employees. (With companies like Infosys helping clients identify and plan pilot RFID projects, we'll no doubt be seeing more and more companies dabbling in this area. Those interested in reading objections to RFID use should check out the position paper issued by CASPIAN, EPIC, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Junkbusters, ACLU, Meyda Online, EFF, and PrivacyActivism.)"

Comments

Re:Link me to them...

[fishbowl]

It shows that you really do play, thanks for posting tgd.

People whose gambling experience consists of losing a roll of nickles in a slot machine, don't get it: You don't really want anonymity. You want the casino to know you're there, that you're playing, etc. You want to play in tourneys. You want comps. You want them to know you played, win or lose. If you're not picking up comps, you're missing half the strategy.

You don't want anonymity, you want them to notice you and say "Hello mister TGF, can I get you anything?"

Re:wont stem employee theft.

[bigbigbison]

At the casino I worked at, employees who have acess to the kitchen are not the same ones that have access to enough chips to make it worthwhile. There are cameras everywhere in a casino, out on the floor as well as behind the scenes.

I honestly can't think that employee theft of chips is really that huge of an issue since the ammount of money that each cashier has is counted at the end of shift and if you are off enough money to make stealing chips worth it, say $500+ then they will not let you work there long if you are off that much very often. They even went so far as to make us use clear cups with clear liquid in them in the cage so that we could drop things in them.

Dealers are under a lot more scrutiny from the cameras than cashiers. There are dedicated cameras looking at the chips on the table.

At the casino I worked at, chips in the chip bank, (in storage) are supposed to be counted and verified every shift so a theft there would be caught fairly easilly.

When I worked in the cashier cage and was the banker in charge of the cashiers in the cage, it wasn't uncommon to call down to the vault and have half a million dollars in cash delivered. So with that kind of money floating around, if I was going to steal, i wouldn't have been chips. If, as an employee, you are going to steal from the casino, you need to go big becasue if you do it multiple times, you will get caught.