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After a decade-long legal battle over the issuance of Class III Gaming licenses Colusa Casino Resort, owned and operated by The Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians, secured 427 additional licenses in October 2009. Looking at an increase of fifty percent to their existing gaming floor Colusa’s management team needed to get creative on where and how these games would be placed—and with 365 days to make these licenses for Class III machines available to the public they’d have to do it fast. What this mid-sized property just north of Sacramento, California did next was both a stroke of brilliance and courage.
In November of 2009, just a month after Colusa had been awarded these additional gaming licenses Kevin Parker, Director of Casino Operations, attended G2E with the directive of populating these licenses with new games. With the clock ticking they were faced with few viable options. They could build out, but finding a contractor that could complete the necessary renovations in such a short amount of time would be complicated. They could build a tent and move their popular high stakes Bingo game out there to make room, but supplanting the historical foundation of the casino didn’t sound like the right thing to do at the time for Victor Fernandez, General Manager of Colusa Casino Resort. So Parker departed for Las Vegas with the trust of casino management that his knowledge and experience would enable him to develop a plan, and all along he knew that he had a couple of things working for him: a committed and visionary Tribal leadership and an association with one of the most innovative names in gaming, John Acres.
As 2009’s G2E was concluding Parker and Shaun Bisiaux, Slot Manager for Colusa Casino Resort, had dinner with John and James Acres to discuss the possibilities. As Parker brought up his dilemma of squeezing these games into every nook and cranny of his gaming floor, John Acres was already working on a completely unique approach that would actually help both parties: persistent-state, server-centric gaming tied to a specific user’s account that could be played out onto a device as small as an Ipad™ or Ipod™. This mutually beneficial concept was very intriguing in that it would help Colusa to introduce their games on the floor while avoiding major changes to their infrastructure and the associated construction costs, and having a partner for this endeavor would help John and James Acres transform their idea from theory to reality. For them to launch this revolutionary gaming idea they needed a partner with the foresight and expertise to help them develop this new technology on an actual casino floor in order to comply with all applicable standards and regulations, so Parker seized the opportunity to cement the partnership. He knew this was THE opportunity to accomplish not only Colusa Casino Resort’s objectives but to open up the realm of possibilities that server-centric gaming solutions could provide to the entire Native American gaming industry.
The next day, each party went their own way, asking themselves the same question: in less than a year, would it be possible to create and build a server-centric system that could play out onto smaller hand-held devices? And that’s before considering all of the GLI hurdles this would have to pass. The challenge was daunting, if not downright impossible. Knowing full well the risk and limited time frame involved with this venture the Tribal Council examined their options and voted to commit to this visionary project. As a result, technology that many major gaming manufacturers had been saying was decades away would have to be accomplished in less than a year by the progressive Tribal leadership of the Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians, the dynamic executive management team at Colusa Casino Resort and the pioneers at Acres Gaming.
After flying through months of licensing and testing this new hand-held gaming system, now known as the A4, was truly starting to take shape. By late August the A4 prototype was finally ready to deploy, and as the October license deadline loomed closer the Colusa team had just one more hurdle to clear: the creation of a designated Wi-Fi area for this new form of gaming to take place—The Wintun Gaming Lounge. “We have always prided ourselves on delivering the best possible gaming experience for our guests, and the A4 system provides exactly that. Our customers will soon have the freedom to move about the casino while enjoying new levels of gaming comfort, convenience and excitement,” says Fernandez. “To begin, we’ve created a dedicated A4 gaming lounge featuring things you wouldn’t find on any other gaming floor like comfortable chairs, sofas and even a tapas menu. In the near future, A4 gaming will find its way into our traditional casino floor, our bingo hall and our restaurants. This technology will revolutionize our entire layout.” What started out as an exercise in space-saving and economically populating licenses quickly became a brand new amenity featuring comfort and excitement for Colusa Casino Resort’s guests.
To think that it all began not in a gigantic Las Vegas property, but rather a mid-sized resort in Northern California.
In late September 2010 Colusa Casino Resort became the very first casino in the world to launch the brand new Acres 4.0 A4 mobile gaming product. Parker says, “This true server-centric system houses 373 games on an appliance no bigger than a toaster! It’s wireless, ticketless, wager account-based and extremely secure. It has been certified by GLI and passed the audit standards as interpreted by a major accounting firm in Indian country.” At launch date there were two titles, poker and keno, but Parker goes on to add that there are presently multiple slot titles already submitted to GLI for testing and certification, with a steady stream of titles to follow from here on out. He remains tight-lipped but very excited about everything Colusa Casino Resort has to offer with the A4 product except to say “You will be hearing a great deal about that in the very near future.” He invites everyone to come to Colusa Casino Resort to experience the future of gaming.
Beyond the smaller portable game convenience and gamefloor footprint, A4 gaming will prove to be a revolutionary path for tribes with little venture capital or infrastructure to enter into gaming to gain tribal independence and sovereignty. Although not the primary intention Colusa Casino Resort and Acres 4.0 have created a whole new business model for all new tribal gaming startups to follow.