Caesars Entertainment officially rolled out a comped drink monitoring system at all their casinos on the Las Vegas strip about a year ago. Now, some of the casinos off the strip are following suit.
The comped drink monitoring system is a technology created by Ardent Progressive Systems & Games.
It's a green light, red light alert system designed to tell the staff if you're playing enough to qualify for comped drinks:
- When you enter money into a bar top machine like video poker, Blackjack, or Keno, the machine turns on a blue light to show someone is playing.
- As you play enough, your light will turn green, alerting the bartender you are ready for a drink.
- If you fall behind and don't gamble at a fast enough rate, your light will turn red.
"It gets rid of the people that want to hang around and play a quarter and try to basically, I don't want to use the word scam, but basically take advantage of the system," said Albert Tabola with Ardent Progressive Systems & Games.
Tabola says, if you're a consistent player, this won't affect you. You will still get your comped drinks. It simply affects the people who want something for nothing.
He also says the technology has been so successful at Caesars properties, other casinos want to follow suit. In a year, he says, Caesars saved 35% on comped drink costs.
Now, the Golden Nugget is trialing the technology on their casino floor.
"Now we're looking to go out into more the local market," said Tabola.
He also says they are in talks with some other off-strip casinos and we could soon see the technology just about everywhere.
