This article first appeared in the Jul/Aug 2011 issue of World Gaming magazine.
As reported in the last issue of World Gaming, the 135-player Imperial Stadium at Venetian and it’s 100-player younger cousin at the Sands opened recently with much fanfare. Now Venetian and Sands have taken Imperial Stadium to the next level, with greatly enhanced game play, including offering baccarat and multi-tabling.
Make no bones about it – live dealer ‘electronic table games’ (ETG) are the new black. These games offer multiple real table games with real live dealers, but players place their bets at their own personal electronic terminals. ETGs have been a runaway success at Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore, no doubt due to tech-savvy Singaporeans embracing a format they were already familiar with from visits to Resorts World Genting in Malaysia. We are going to see more and more of this style of gaming in Asia and throughout the world in the near future.
The Venetian and its sister property the Sands have been the ETG industry leaders in Macau, with each property opening a massively multi-player ‘Imperial Stadium’ offering roulette and sic-bo earlier this year. Now Venetian and Sands have made another major technological breakthrough, with the launch of both baccarat and multi-tabling on these machines. This fantastic new technology was installed in the Venetian Imperial Stadium on June 22, and is also planned to be fully operational at the Sands Imperial Stadium from July 19.
As soon as one of my playing friends called telling me the news, I rushed down to the Venetian to check out the new Imperial Stadium myself, and bumped into my good friend Geoff Andres, VP of Slot Operations at Venetian.
“It’s always nice to offer an experience for people who may be a little nervous about playing at a completely live table”, Geoff said.
Geoff went on to say that the new Imperial Stadium is still the same concept of live dealers with electronic betting. But once I got on to the terminal and played a few hands for myself it was obvious to me that this was a vast improvement on the previous Imperial Stadium!
Here are all the details you need to know:
- There are four tables in the centre of the stadium: two baccarat, one roulette and one sic-bo. I am told the Venetian has plans to open two more baccarat tables in mid July, making six games in total!
- All games are dealt by a live dealer on a live table, just as a normal table game would be.
- High quality close-up cameras capture every second of the live action on every table, and broadcast it to every terminal in the stadium in real time.
- Most importantly – players can now play every single table from every terminal! If you see a hot streak on another table, you can quickly jump on it without leaving your seat! If you play every hand of all four tables, you’re getting a result about every 13 seconds! When there are six tables of action there will be a result about every 8 seconds!
- The screens are state of the art – 22 inch HD screens with non-reflective glass and a host of information on them about all the games. It’s very easy to jump around between the different games.
- The 135 player terminals are now arranged in complete circles around the tables in the centre of the stadium. The stadium doesn’t have the ‘three section’ feel it used to have, and it is clear that all terminals offer betting on all games.
- There are 14 massive screens on a huge chandelier above the tables in the centre of the stadium. These massive HD screens show all the action from all the games and can even be used to broadcast a major sporting or other event.
- There are four pillars at the four corners of the stadium – each pillar has four screens giving another 16 screens available to display the action.
The new Imperial stadium is open 24 hours a day, 7 day a week. It reminds me of when the whole aviation industry was gaga about the new A380 super airplane, and only Singapore Airlines had it. I’m sure we’ll see more of these fantastic live dealer ETGs around Macau in the future, but for now if you want to play this type of game in one of the major Macau casinos the only options available to you are Venetian, and Sands after they do their upgrade on July 19.
