The New Pit Progressives , side bets and operating systems have brought the casino table game into the 21st century
By Frank Legato
When the Palms in Las Vegas reopened in 2022 after a two-year , pandemic-induced hiatus , groundbreaking developments were in the air .
The casino , purchased from Red Rock Resorts a year earlier by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians , became the first casino resort in Las Vegas to be fully owned and operated by a Native American tribe .
Less than a month after its new christening , the Palms hosted another groundbreaking event , this time in the realm of table games — the largestto-date installation of Bonus Spin Xtreme , the award-winning progressive side bet system from AGS that enables casino operators to link all table games on the casino floor to the same jackpot pool , requiring only one seed amount and providing faster-incrementing and larger jackpot awards .
While the Palms didn ’ t link all its table games to the single jackpot controller , it linked the jackpot to an eye-opening 40 out of 50 table games , including 24 blackjack tables , 12 baccarat tables and four roulette tables .
Bonus Spin Xtreme , the first system to link different table games to the same progressive , is indicative of the innovation being seen in the table game pit , a realm which , aside from multi-deck shufflers , had seen precious little innovation in technology for the better part of a century . There was , of course , the occasional splash of creativity in the form of successful new games like Three Card Poker and Let It Ride , but for years , technological advances remained largely within the purview of the slot floor .
For the past two decades , though , innovation — often drawn from elements of that same slot floor — have transformed the pit for players and increased house hold on famously low-hold games . Side bets have proliferated , the newest ones replacing or augmenting the placards and felt pay scales with slot-style progressive jackpot meters .
David Lopez , CEO , and John Hemberger , senior vice president of table products , AGS
18 Global Gaming Business MAY 2023