Posted under Poker
Can you imagine walking into a popular Sin City hotel and seeing no dealers, chips, or cards? Well if this seems hard to believe, you may be in for a big shock. The Vegas based casino Excalibur is now experimenting with this new ground-breaking idea of automating everything from the dealers, to the actual poker tables. Owners from the casino hotel are going to equip the poker rooms with 12 digitial machines for a six-month trial period.
The North-Carolina based business PokerTek is in charge of the electronic machines, which are redoing the way poker will be played in Vegas. The business already has 230 machines around the world, with the biggest located in Casino du Montreal (a total of 25 machines were installed in this Canadian casino hotel).
So what are the side-effects of this alteration? For starters, about 40 Excalibur poker dealers will be searching for new places to work. Some of these dealers have been working at the hotel since its opening in 1990. Todd DeRemer, Excalibur’s Vice President of Casino Operations, says that the poker dealers will be offered other dealer jobs in the same casino hotel.
According to DeRemer, the transformation is being made to give rookie gamblers a chance to play this popular game without feeling intimidated. He had already played these new machines before deciding upon the change. “It’s not overpowering”, he says, “We think that element will bring back the gamblers”.
The enhanced computers will allow the poker players to play Texas hold’em, seven card stud and Omaha. 40-inch flat screen tv’s, which are located in the middle of the table, will show each table’s community cards, gambler’s stakes and the pot.