Gadgetory

if you've ever walked into a casino it might seem like a fairly straightforward operation lots and lots of flashing lights and candy crush sound effects you stick a couple bucks into a slot machine you hope it spits out thousands of dollars or you throw down some chips on the craps table and pray that the dice stay hot simple right no as it turns out the level of Technology you interact with inside a gaming establishment is among the most sophisticated anywhere and it probably shouldn't be that surprising given how much money is constantly churning through a casino basically the moment you set foot inside it goes to work you see many casinos keep databases on specific people card counters people who have been caught stealing or maybe even just that guy yes you Kevin who had too many free cocktails and decided to use the potted plant in the corner as a urinal and they achieved this by using biometric scanning to capture an image of your face when you walk in the door to compare you against the database of undesirables but let's say you've never tried to pull off an ocean's 11 style heist so security leaves you alone and you make your way over to a slot machine well it used to be that you would pull down the arms cross your fingers and hope that when the mechanical reels stopped spinning a bunch of fruit or something would line up but these days the attention-grabbing graphics are just for show slot machines determine if you've won or lost almost immediately after you press spin using a pseudo-random number generator that Awards prizes based on pre-programmed pay tables that are spitting out numbers at a rate of hundreds per second by design the occassionally award big jackpot that allow the casino to entice others in with dreams of striking it rich while also preventing frequent gamblers from being able to figure out when a machine is hot to keep payouts tight this is critical because over two-thirds of the average casinos revenue comes from slot machines so being a savvy gambler then you give up on the slots and go set some money down on the blackjack table instead where the dealer hands you a stack of chips now these might seem like mere pieces of plastic but the chips actually contain more chips RFID chips that is they contain serial numbers that are skinned both at the tables as well as when you take them to the cashier this prevents people from trying to cash counterfeit chips and also protect the casino in cases where authentic ones get stolen one miscreant lifted 1.5 million dollars in chips from the Bellagio in Las Vegas back in 2010 so the casino simply invalidated their RFID tags so the dude ended up going to prison for stealing what were essentially a bunch of worthless chucky cheese tokens I almost feel bad for him and for yet another layer of security chips can also contain special UV inlays that only show up under a black light similar to features found in modern currency which you can learn more about here and chips aren't the only little handheld items at casinos with bacon protection the playing cards can have barcodes printed on them with invisible ink these are scanned when the dealer clears them off the table so the odds are that if you're trying to use sleight of hand to switch cards you're going to end up with a date with big Tim but you're an honest player and besides surely you wouldn't think of trying to cheat with all of those cameras on the ceiling anyway and that would probably be wise although some of them are just regular surveillance cameras others are actually can two systems that can recognize which cards are dealt bedding patterns and even wins and losses for each player at the table so because long-term trends in casino games are rather predictable these cameras can help casinos pick up on the abnormal patterns that occur when someone might be counting cards trying to perform trickery with their chips or colluding with a dealer or another player to cheat now of course not all casino technology is security-related you know that Players Club card they give you for free that you've been inserting into slot machines handing to dealers and even showing at the cocktail bar although they track how much you're spending so they can give you comps and discounts they also use that data to build a detailed picture of what your favorite games are how much you've won or lost whether you're a skilled player and even which casino restaurants you're eating at in order to offer you perks that will lure you back to the casino and entice you to keep gambling especially if their algorithms think that the casino can suck lots of money out of you in the future so if you won big on your last trip to Vegas be wary of any special offers you get that are designed to get you to hand all of that money right back but feel free to go crazy with that two-for-one buffet coupon that one's okay speaking of buffets do you find yourself with too much on your plate as a small business owner or 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