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Following the Chips in Wynn's New Casino
ctwxman writes "As Steve Wynn gets set to open his new Las Vegas casino, something new hits the tables: RFID encoded chips they report that "The fancy new chips look just like regular ones, only they contain radio devices that signal secret serial numbers. Special equipment linked to the casino's computer systems and placed throughout the property will identify legitimate chips and detect fakes" " " Having stayed pretty much everywhere else cool on the strip, I'm sure I'll try the Wynn out soon after it opens, but I think I'll be cashing out my chips before I leave the casino. It makes me nervous knowing I could be unwittingly scanned by others after I leave the floor. Of course, this added inconvenience may save me a fortune in blackjack losses!
Aside from helping to stop counterfeitting, these RF chips could also be used to further what casinos already do: track players. If you know what players have what chips you can figure out what bets they place at table games easier.
:)
They already do this with slots (where you put a card in with credits) to keep track of comps and the like. If this were implemented into the chips, it would be easier to keep tabs on mid-low range players and who is a good repeat player for issuing comps.
Just an expansion of many casinos approach to customer relations
While it may be difficult to track chips on the table, the techonology would be very useful in the cashier's office. For one thing, you could incorporate an RFID reader in your chip counter - that would prevent someone from cashing in counterfeit chips. Also, while it's alright for players to walk out of the casino with chips, it's not okay for employees to walk out of the cash office with chips. While they already have cameras galore in there, RFID would give them another way to make sure cashier office staff didn't walk out with a spare chip or two - unless their underwear from Wal-Mart sets off the scanner.
Incorrect, not only will it make the teachers lax, it will do exactly the opposite of what it is intended to do...if you track me by a signal vs actually seeing me, I can just throw that badge in my buddies backpack and then skip the class, the teacher will read that I'm there still and you have accomplished nothing.
Are you *sure* that's not an active tag ? ie: is the tag powered in any way, and how big is it ?
After giving up on the manufacturer-supplied readers, we built a reader starting with the reference designs available, and it's all down to the power emitted, the angle-adjusted cross-sectional area of both tag and reader antennae, and the frequency of the carrier wave. I would have thought it would be physically impossible to achieve what you say using only passive RFID. Pretty easy with active RFID though...
We were using ~13MHz carrier waves, which were the most reliable we could get. There were also ~125 KHz systems. Perhaps there's a higher band now that your auto system uses...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
The RFID tags used on cars are much larger than any chip I've ever seen in a casino - and there are good reasons they are as big as they are - they need to absorb enough energy to send the signal back to the detector/antenna 10-15 feet away...
Also, casinos already know where the players are, they don't need to track them based on chip movement...
I think the real application will be the action at the table (a computer could watch the volume of betting and act as a virtual pit boss, signalling when the action is getting heavy/slacking off) and in the cashier (count and verify chips quickly). I also wonder if they will also use sensors in the doorways to try and keep their chips in their casino, and know when someone comes in with chips from another casino...
Ken
Ken
what will be interesting is to see how they work this new feature into their procedures.
As it is now, I could easily (assuming I could have good counterfits made that were not distinguishable from normal chips in some simple manner) bring fake chips into a casino and use them... the hard part is getting good fakes and putting them into your stacks without arising suspicion.
Remember there are cameras and various forms of security all over the place.
So lets say I do make it to the table with stacks of fairly good counterfit chips. Lets say they are exact minus the RFID tag. OK, so my normal course of action is to go to the poker table, but I could go anywhere.
My goal here is not to make money, but to break even. I can't risk taking fake chips to the cashier, because thats where its very likely to get caught and if they have and RFID, they will definitly be looking for missing chips.
(ie they will want to wave my rack of 500 chips over the detector and get exactly 500 valid unique rfid signatures right?)
So I need to exchange all or at least most (if I have 1 or 2 fakes in a set of 500 chips, its going to be easy to claim I won them at a table and they wont care, but if I have a large number, rest assured they will have some questions for me)
Preferably I want these chips going into other people's stacks rather than the dealers. So my best strategy is to fake $5 chips, because they don't use $5 chips in the rake usually, and never use one in a situation where the dealer will use it to make change... this isn't too hard.
Now play a few rounds of poker and you see I have a problem. How do I keep fakes and reals seprate? If my method of getting them to the table is sound (notice I am ignoring this aspect, and with good reason, will get to that) then its easy to start out with a mix of fakes and reals that I can identify and nobody else can by sight.
Each time I win a pot, I get my chips back, plus other peoples, and note, between rounds of betting, the dealer splashes the pot. so I can't easily keep my fakes seprate.
ALl in all the whole thing will work for a little while, but will quickly break down.
Best I can come up with is leave with $500 in real chips, just play to break even, then toss the chips in a backpack and leave. people do this all the time, leave withthe chips to come back later....
Then come back with them racked in the backpack, but with ALL my chips in the backpack (so security doesn't become supiscous if they see me take $500 in chips out of my backpack when the door mounted detectors only registered $100)
Then I play and try to keep the chips seprate.... leave again with all the chips... separate on my own time, and come back with the real chips only.
But by this time they have realised that I am the only person at my table that never cashed in, and everyone else had bogus chips...
Thats what the casinos have, defense in depth. Sure you can pull off a little scam here and there, but by the time it amounts to much, they have put 2 and 2 together.
All they have to do is set the bar high enough that you can't scam enough to make it worth risking. Which is why this will eliminate any worries about fake chips.
The real scams are collusion on the poker table and card counting on black jack... and marking cards etc. (tho I think card counting is bullshit, its not the players fault that he can remember things and do math... its the houses fault for using dealer shoes rather than shuffling every time)
Frankly if you want to make money at the casino do what my roomates and I do... become good at poker. You will make money any time you play against people that take bigger risks than you do over time. It is not hard to become disciplined enough to play better than 90% of the poker players out there.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
That's like closing the barndoor after the barn's burned down!
Membership cards linked to multiple casinos, every square inch of every building under surveliance, and data mineing the likes of which the G'uvment can't compete with. Cashless video games that print out your winnings on a barcoded slip of paper...
If this has you concerned, RFID in your chips is the _least_ of your problems.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
This the problem.
Your experience with 125kHz and 13MHz systems are using inductive coupling, and thus, must be within the electromagnetic nearfield for reader interrogation. These are legacy systems such as security badge readers, and yes, they're limited to short ranges (say 6 inches).
New systems (such as epc) are currently 902-928MHZ, and (real soon now) 2400MHz band. These devices can interrogate transponders in the electromagnetic far field, and can easily read passive transponders up to 10 meters with 0dBm (1 watt radiated power).
Toll collection systems run in the 450MHz band and are -20dBm (100 milliwatt radiated power). The transponders are actively powered (they have small batteries inside of them that) and have to be replaced after several years.
Seems to me it could be spoofed, but I Am Not An Expert. What if you have a small radio transmitter in your pocket to swamp the table's RFID transmitter? Maybe read the RFID at one table, and play it back later to spoof some other table?
Doing this in a place with more cameras than patrons, heavy security, a network of private detectives (Griffin Investigations), and the most sophisticated facial recognition packages around makes this a fools game at best.
If you value your kneecaps, don't pull this in a casino.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
If you lost all your chips, how are they going to track you? Then again, I always make it a point to keep a $1 chip as a souvenir, so maybe they could bank on that.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
I worked as a cashier in a casino (that bills itself as the most popular riverboat casino in the world if anyone wants to figure out which one) for at total of 2 and 1/2 years and while I remember several instances of counterfeit money, I don't remember EVER seeing counterfeit chips. I have seen chips from other casinos, but not forged ones.
While I didn't work in Vegas, I am highly sceptical this happens. If they said it was to prevent employee theft, I would have an easier time beleiving it (although to be effective it would require every exit being covered, which would seemingly be cost prohibitive).
For counterfeiting chips to be effective, you would have to have a lot of chips, and prefereably a lot of high denomination chips. At least in the casino i worked in, surveillance knows who has the chips already so if someone they have never seen before walks in with even an ammount as small as $5000 in chips, there is a good chance they are going to know. Cashing in anything over $10,000 gets reported to the government anyway (again, unless Vegas is different, but I think that is part of RICO laws), so I don't see counterfeiting chips being effective when you can fake money ans spend it everywhere.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
What I think is more important about this data, is that the gambling habits of people can be tracked easily. This is probably one of the most powerful marketing, and surveillence tools out there. Knowing how many chips a person likes to carry, and other information is kind of scary. I look at it as an invasion of privacy. There are all sorts of legal matters at stake. In Austin they already are making kids wear RFID dog tags for attendance purposes, now all we need is a casino making sure you have money in your pocket to burn. Watch them deny you a line of credit when they see you blow a mess of chips in less than three minutes, and are able to track where they went.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
I don't have an issue with this since the chips are the property of the casino.
It's the same thing if they decided to put RFID tags in the towels.
The only thing I would be interested in, is full disclosure. Even if it's something I have to ask the manager about, the the manager would tell me, "Yes, the chips contain RFID tags, we use them when you cash in the chips to make sure they're legit."
What surprises me is that hotels haven't put RFID tags in their towels and charged you when you steal them!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
unless the second casino just sends someone over to the first casino to cash the chips out.