Mana Azizsoltani

My recent consulting trip to Southeast Asia taught me a lot about the way the cage works at a 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 they can dedicate to a single rolling program. So they wanted to put Walker Digital chip attribution to the test: could we make sure cash players were not able to cash out credit chips after a day of playing and passing chips around? The problem is that it is not so easy to track. You can end up with a convoluted chain of rolling value allocations. For example, Player A gives Player B a chip from their rolling program. Player B wagers that chip and wins. Now Player B has a chip that is a non-negotiable chip from Player A and a cashable chip that they won from the wager. Then Player B colors down the non-negotiable chip and gives half of it to Player C, who wants to go to the cage and cash out. I have to know that Player C cannot cash out the value that originally came from Player A.

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 PROMO PROMO $25 $25

All this, mixed with chips not having clean ownership because of some lacking operational SOPs, some peculiarities in the database, and the sheer number of 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 don't 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 Cash out this much

Clean value that belongs to Player C.

Program value This much is from some other program

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