Mana Azizsoltani

My recent consulting trip to Southeast Asia taught me a LOT about the way that the cage works at the casino, and also that saying "the lady in the cage" can sound weirdly sadistic out of context. The business is starting to pick up at the property and they are starting to run out of tables to be able to dedicate to a single rolling program, so they want to put Walker Digital chip attribution to the test to understand how to make sure that cash players are not able to cash out credit chips when they go to the cage after a day of playing and passing chips. The problem is that its not so easy to track, because we could have some convoluted chain of rolling value allocations, for example: For example, player X gives player Y a chip from their rolling program. Player Y wagers that chip and wins. Now Player Y has a chip that is a non-neg chip from Player X and a cashable chip that they won from the wager. Lets say now that Player Y colors down the non-neg chip and gives half of it to Player Z, who wants to go to the cage and cash out. I have to know that Player Z cannot cash out the value that was originally from Player X....

Player A Rolling program stack

Five non-negotiable $100 chips begin with Player A.

$100 $100 $100 $100 $100

Player B Cash player plus borrowed value

Player B already has cashable chips, then receives Player A's non-negotiable value.

$100 $100 $100 $100 $100 $100

Wager and win The inherited chip creates two kinds of value.

One part is still tied to Player A's program. The win is cashable value for Player B.

$100 $100

Player C The cage sees a blended pocket.

Player C arrives with cash chips, promotional chips, and two pieces of value that trace back to Player A.

$100 $100 PC PC $25 $25

All this, mixed with chips not having clean ownership due to some lacking operational SOPs, some peculiarities about the database, and the sheer number of the transactions, made things really difficult. But, we were able to figure it out with a little bit of t(h)inkering. And when I presented all of the information back to the person in charge, they told me "Just show me what you got, I dont need to know your love story". So I saved them my love story in the cage, and showed them the following:

Player C at the cage

Cashable $200 cashable

Clean value that belongs to Player C and can be cashed out.

Program value $50 from Player A

Value that traces back to Player A's rolling program.

The whole experience taught me a lot about rolling programs and non-negotiable chips, casino cage operations, and transactional databases as a whole.

A Love Story in the Cage