Casino Enterprise Management

Four Types of Games: Leaders, Loners, Laggards and Losers
By A. K. Singh and Andrew Cardno

Prof. Singh and I are beginning a series on gaming floor analysis, following is a preview of the effect of combining gravity modeling with fuzzy spatial association rules. The combination of these two analytical tools gives a breakout of the games on the gaming floor into four interesting categories (average performance games are not considered interesting). This simple breakout of games is in itself probably not enough for decisions but it is a powerful first step in the data exploration process. The following describes the four categories (the method of calculating these is covered in an upcoming CEM article.)

Type 1: Leaders
These games are outperforming the surrounding games and lift the surrounding games. These games may be the leaders in the area, they are often star performers and analytics suggest that players may be drawn to these games and then flow onto play other games in the same area. Leaders are great candidates for further building the characteristics of a specific area of the gaming floor. They are natural candidates for further market basket analysis as they can be used as a draw card for other games that players who like the Leaders show a preference for.

Type 2: Loners
These games are beacons of performance that are drawing play but not lifting the games in the immediate area. Consider actions such as adding more of the same game or running market basket analysis to find other products which players who play this game like to flow onto. Comparison of the demographics of the players of “Loner” games to its neighbors will give insight into why players in the area are not mixing.

Example from a Real Gaming Floor
In this real world gaming floor optimization there was a salt and pepper arrangement of two games in a bank of slot machines (Alternating themes). Both of these themes were giving similar theoretical win numbers but on further analysis the players were found to be not mixing products. Analysis into the demographics of the two games showed that the two groups of players were of quite different demographic profiles. The very profitable response to this insight was the creation of two areas of gaming, one for players who preferred “salt” themes and one for players who preferred “pepper” themes. The results were stronger play for both games, the cost was a move of an existing product and a simple communication to the two customer groups informing them where their games were now located.

Type 3: Laggards
The laggards are games that have a positive lift effect on the games around them but are given play that is less than the surrounding games. The linkage these games have with their surroundings indicates we should treat them with care; one approach is to apply a “Why We Buy” survey to gain some understanding of the way players are playing these games; questions such as “are we oversupplied with this product in this area?”, or “Is the game priced correctly?” should be considered in the first round of follow up analyses.

Type 4: Losers
These are the games that have a negative effect on the surrounding areas and are under performing. This kind of game is a great candidate for removal, but one should not jump to conclusions: sometimes further analysis using a market basket approach can show clusters of these games that have quite “isolated” players.

Example from a Real Gaming Floor
If the players are isolated to a particular product then it might be better to setup a separate playing area focused on this small group. In one real world example we have worked on, we found a group of Keno machines that were low performers  and had low (in fact near zero) lift on the surrounding games. However customer surveys showed the players were extremely loyal to this product. Instead of removing the product we turned one of the most isolated and underperforming areas into a specialist Keno room, this accompanied by a marketing program inviting these players to their special area was successful; moreover,  the space that was made available became one of the highest performing spaces on the floor.