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!

Comments

Be calm, relax, things aren't that bad...

[Space cowboy]

The range over which you can read RFID information in any sort of portable (ie: non-obvious) fashion is limited to a few inches. In fact, tuning the damn things so they'll read at (say: 4 or 5) inches is hard.

The readers that are designed for doorways can do roughly 2 feet, but they're huge and very very obvious - they're designed for store entrances, where they make you walk through the "gates" to get in/out of the store. You can't miss a 4-foot (max) separated row of columns covering all the exits...

RFID works by the reader exciting a sympathetic response in the tag (which is itself unpowered, though it rectifies the incoming RF energy to self-power), this response modifies the reader's waveform signal, overlaying an incredibly weak (roughly 1% of the incident waveform) signal on top. It is this weak modification to the reader's signal that has to be extracted and deconstructed into a bitstream.

Speaking as one whom RFID has tried, it's not an easy task to get any significant distance between tag and reader, and IM(NS :-)HO the likelihood of being randomly snooped on wherever you go is damn small. Almost flying-pig small. Our asset management system aimed for a 6" separation between tag and reader, and we didn't care about being obvious though there were size constraints for the reader (had to fit in a 1U box). Getting repeatable results proved very difficult with the units we had.

Aside: London Underground introduced an RFID-based system for block-purchase of tickets, promising it would read your "ticket" in your bag/pocket as you passed by. This claim was dropped on introduction, and they now advise you to swipe the reader with your tag as you go by...

Simon.

Re:Be calm, relax, things aren't that bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as one whom RFID has tried...

RFID tried you out? How did that go? Did it hurt?

Re:Be calm, relax, things aren't that bad...

[Tackhead]

> The readers that are designed for doorways can do roughly 2 feet, but they're huge and very very obvious - they're designed for store entrances, where they make you walk through the "gates" to get in/out of the store. You can't miss a 4-foot (max) separated row of columns covering all the exits...

Considering the space already available to install cameras, cabling, and God only knows what else above the ceiling, wouldn't it be easy to include large transmitters in the ceiling?

Better yet, install a semi-large one (a little smaller than your doorway-size variety) in each table. Doesn't matter if you see all 10 tables "light up" when Joe Gambler walks by them, you only need to get 2-3 hits before you can retrace his steps.

It's sorta like facial recognition in that you can build up a track of where Joe Gambler went during his entire time at the site.

But it's better -- because you can sort those tracks by dollar amount. What would it be worth to a casino's marketing department to know which path certain groups customers walk after losing all their chips (or after doubling their chips!), and reorganizing their floors (placing bank machines along the most likely route for the losers, and slot machines or other tables along the way to the cashier's cage for the winners) accordingly?

If you were really clever, you could even have hustlers on the floor. Guy wins $1000 at a $25 Blackjack table? Cute chick comes over and offers him a drink on the way to the cashier's. Asks him how he did. Points out the conveniently-located row of $100 tables that somehow always have to be walked around before he can get to the cashier's.

As we progress, running a casino will become more and more like playing SimAnt. (Then you can sell an extension the technology to the government to play with the rest of society, and it gets to be a lot more fun, to say nothing of more profitable :)

Re:Be calm, relax, things aren't that bad...

[HarvardAce]

What would it be worth to a casino's marketing department to know which path certain groups customers walk after losing all their chips

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.

i for one welcome our new RFID overlords.

[de1orean]

ehhh, it hardly matters. the house always gets its chips back eventually....

Chips ain't the only thing being tracked...

[funny-jack]

from the rejected submission bin:

funny-jack says: A small school in the San Francisco area has come up with the latest "innovative" use for RFID: tracking student attendance.

What happens when the RFID chip dies?

[Stavr0]

"I'm sorry sir, your $100 chip appears to be counterfeit."
"WHAT? I just got it from the blackjack table over there!"
"Remain calm. Casino security will be with you shortly."

In other words.... PWN3D!

Re:What happens when the RFID chip dies?

[TheCarp]

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

Could it be spoofed? Is this just PR?

[A nonymous Coward]

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?

Plus it would give the security personnel a false sense of security, and maybe more traditional ways of cheating would be easier.

I wonder if this is not just a publicity ploy, just make some noise to get more people in who would not otherwise come in.

multiple uses

[orange_6]

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 :)

Tracking gamblers

[redelm]

RFIDs in the chips will make tracking the gamblers very easy: Record the RFIDs as issued, as bet and as paid out. Yes, it will require (gasp!) computers, but the casinos have money.

They will be able to track individual gabling habits, and from that, system usage.

Not terribly new

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Back in the mid 1990s (1995-1997) when I was working for Casino Software Corporation of America, one of our major competitors already had this kind of system up and operating. Though I think thiers was ACTIVE RFID instead of Passive (was passive available that early?) they had readers in their blackjack table and even a scanner in the shoe to know what cards were where and who to pay out to. I always thought their system was a security hole- if you could grab the image off of the pit boss's system you would know the cards of everybody at all the blackjack tables. But their system sure did prevent the common "double payout" scam that was running around at the time (where the con man went to the table of a dealer he was paying under the table- and knew that he could get the bets paid incorrectly).

Bah, that's nothing

[Chairboy]

That's nothing. Call me when they RFID the cards. I've got a hankerin for some poker.

Another reason...

[johndeeregator]

Another reason for RFID chips is that they can be used to automatically detect bet amounts, and thus can be used to better determine appropriate player comps. For example, with blackjack, simply place a RFID sensor under the box where the player places his bet, and with the appropriate software, the floorman can instantly see how much the player has been betting (and, perhaps, winning and losing, although that's a little more tricky).

Also makes cashing out in the poker room quite a bit quicker.

I wonder...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

If I took some chips out of the casino, rendered the RFID tags useless with a magnet (or whatever it takes), then went back and requested payment, would they refuse to pay?

I can potentially imagine the big stink that would arise if RFID tags stopped working in valid chips for some reason. Suppose you were playing blackjack and won a ton of money, went straight to the cashier, and they refused to pay because the RFID tags weren't responding. I can imagine lawsuits would spring up pretty darned quickly.

I don't get it...

[gUmbi]

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.

I'm pretty sure that you're not supposed to leave the property with the chips but even if you could, they won't be accepted at other casinos (especially since Wynn is not part of the major casino chains - unless you plan on playing in Wynn's property in Macau).

If you're concerned about going back to your room with chips because of theft - well, I think it's more suspicious redeeming them for cash in plain view.

The RFID features are meant to a) reduce theft, fraud and counterfeiting and b) reduce the time required to balance a table.

Re:Is it illegal . . .

[Don'tTreadOnMe]

In the couple of casinos I worked at, they wanted you to take the chips home with you - it's close to 100% profit. And the silvers and clays are made by companies with almost as much rigor as the US Mints, so someone would have to go to a lot of trouble to bring in fake chips.

I can see only bad things

[UnknowingFool]

"Honey, how did you do at the black jack tables?"
"Lost everything."
"Was that before or after you gave that floozy a $100 chip?"
"Damn you RFID!"

Re:Detection range much longer

[kenh]

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

Addendum from the original poster

[ctwxman]

CmdTaco has added comments to the parent post after mine. However, there is no clear distinction where my words end and his begin. Since they might be interpreted to be from me, and they don't represent my sentiments, please note: everything written beginning with the words, "Having stayed," does not belong to me. In email conversation, CmdTaco has said he didn't feel there would be any confusion since my words are italicized. In this case, I respectfully disagree. I would appreciate this post being modded up.

Re:Detection range much longer

[HEbGb]

EZPASS and Fastlane tags are powered transmitters - there's a lithium battery inside them. This is a complelety different beast from the RFID tags in the casino chips (and other small passive devices).