Q & A

Would the industry benefit from the introduction of an internationally accepted core curriculum, testing and certification process for all surveillance people and game supervisors?

What's a good surveillance person? What would be good "stats" for an excellent surveillance person? What specific measurable achievements should be considered when rating the performance of a surveillance person?

At last week's 2012 World Game Protection Conference the question of what is the role of surveillance was discussed at great length. Moving forward as a group we are committed to researching and producing an industry white paper on this subject. We're interested in hearing the thoughts of surveillance people.

Our guest for February is Bill Zender. A regular writer for the Catwalk and author of a number of casino management and game protection books, Bill's most recent book Casino-ology 2: New Strategies for Managing Casino Games was published last year.

Trying something new for 2012. From time to time I want to invite guests to participate in our Q & A Forum. The guest will be given a topic to discuss and y'all can ask questions (for a month). If you have someone in mind for the Q & A please email me with your suggestion. First up - me and this years WGPC.

There has been some discussion amongst long time casino and surveillance professionals that a lot of dealers are not up to the standard of years gone by. By standard they mean, minimal errors, good game protection skills and customer service skills. What do you think?

Casinos purchase millions of decks of cards a year (hell, I think the Venetian Macao probably uses millions of decks alone?) Why the jokers? I'm not a tree hugger but what's up with that. Isn't there enough jokers in a casino?

The recent romp through Las Vegas casinos by a couple of high rolling dice sliding cheats has raised the question; are casino managers turning a blind eye?

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves." ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Most casinos carry a primary and secondary set of chips. For what reasons would you swap them out?