How often, if at all, do casinos revert back to hand shuffles after installing CSMs in your experience? And if they do, how long does it generally take? What factors into such a decision?
At my local casino they installed CSM's last year. It didn't take some time for the avarage player to figure it out that He was being screwed big time...
"Hey look! 21! "
Few weeks after they had been removed and the management brought back the old and classic eight deck game...pfff...
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Last edited by ferenc11; 07-08-2018 at 02:50 AM.
One of my local store (store A) have 6D hand shuffle and 4D CSM and DD asm. The CSM tables always full because the min bet is $5 but $10 at busy times. Other store (store B) has SD with hand shuffle but 6/5 with $10 min, also busy on weekends and evenings. Store B had CSM few years ago but I do not see them lately. I saw some VR blackjack machines in couple places but see none now. VR blackjack machines had s17 and many side bets.
Which intrigues me for the circumstances of the particular venue that Koz mentions. A quiet winter stint and staff pay disputes would surely factor into the expense of keeping the entire floor installed with rented CSMs? Which you'd think would make management question whether or not CSMs are more of a hindrance than a help. A dozen or so tables at $1800 a month during the quiet season would surely put a dent in a small-medium casino's quarterly..
It is more expensive in the US. I forget the exact figure but I was told ASM's and CSM's rent for $2300/month for each machine. Many casinos have dozens of them. They are constantly breaking down and slowing down the game. That's around a million dollars a year lost to machine shuffle rentals at the larger casinos.
They are patented so they can't be replicated and the owners of the patents know they can make far more by renting them than selling them.
Often companies have reasons for renting equipment rather than buying it even when buying it would clearly save them money.
From a tax perspective, owning would allow for a capital cost depreciation, the (likely declining) percentage per year and number of years of writeoff before attaining zero value versus 100% expense write off over year. Further, the issue if who covers maintenance - wheather it is a lessee expense or lessor cost.
I assume (though cannot confirm) it also saves them money on dealing with certification of a fair game. If the company that makes the machines is the only one allowed to tamper with them then they are the ones that need to deal with whatever regulators a jurisdiction has (or would have) to certify a fair game. If the casino owns them, there is enough incentive to make them non-random to increase profits that regulators would start to bear down on casinos regarding them. By leasing them, however, they can point the finger elsewhere and make a good claim to having no conflict of interest. I have no idea if this already is a problem being solved as I outline, but it would make sense. If the casino made or owned their own machines, you better believe they'd be dealing with regular certification of their machines (at cost to them, long term), even if laws to do that don't exist currently.
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