Since its first appearance at a trade show in 2005, PokerTek’s PokerPro tables have been raising eyebrows worldwide. Outside of North America and Canada, the tables are distributed by Aristocrat, who have been pushing the new technology in a controlled, common sense fashion. PokerPro has the potential to introduce entirely new customers to the world of casino poker, and as a result, Aristocrat and PokerTek should have a steadily-growing hit on their hands. But how has the first installation in Europe coped with the new machines, and most importantly, how have their customers reacted?

The first installation came late in 2006, when Aspers in Newcastle took in its first PokerPro table. When news of the installation first emerged, it was very quickly followed by news that the casino was taking a second table, which would suggest that the table has performed very well – but, it seems, not quite in the ways that casino manager Paul Sculpher or Poker Manager Chris Brown expected.

Initially, the tables were located in the far corner of the casino’s poker room. This is, as the casino is laid out, the furthest point away from the entrance on the ground floor. Players would have to walk through the card room to get to PokerPro, and casual viewers would almost certainly not be exposed to its charms.

So why put the table so seemingly out of the way? Well, as Sculpher explains, the casino thought its core market would be their regular poker players. “We anticipated it would be popular with all kinds of players, and particularly that the regulars would play it. The logic was that if regulars are playing it, because you get more hands, if you’re playing well you can win more money. It turns out that it’s more difficult to convince regulars to play it on a long-term basis and that the market for PokerPro is in people who are not regular hard-core poker players, they like to play, they’re learning to play and they want to enjoy themselves without worrying about getting the chips wrong or anything like that.”

Paul has hit on one of the technology’s great strengths there – it’s the ideal introduction to poker for beginners, or those who have learned the game on the internet. And with those players in mind, Paul moved the two tables to the edge of the poker room, so they can now be seen and entice potential players from the main gaming floor. Paul added: “The tables were originally located in the corner of the poker room, more or less tucked away. Now they’re out in the main part of the gaming floor, more in the flow of the casino. The intention was to get them seen by more people. When they’re tucked in the middle of the card room, the only people that are going to see them are card room players; when they’re out there on the floor, then everybody gets to see them. On a weekend night, this end of the casino is extremely busy. It’s just really to gain exposure; once there’s a game on there it becomes an attraction in its own right, people sit and watch and wonder what it’s about, they recognise it from seeing it on TV. There are people out there who definitely want to play poker but maybe find it a bit scary coming through the doors and into the card room, and want to come into it the soft way.

“For example, on a Friday night, both tables will be full more or less all night. We’ll have a member of staff working the floor near the tables so if there’s a customer there who’s not quite sure but think they’d like to play, the staff can talk them through it and explain how everything works.”

It’s surprising that the casino’s hard-core poker players didn’t take to the machine initially, as PokerPro can certainly appeal to both beginner and experienced player, but Chris Brown knows his market – and as Aspers seems to be the place to go in the North-East for poker, he certainly should. Chris elaborated: “The regular players, the old-school type of players, they don’t like it because it’s not what they’re used to. Up here, it’s very difficult to get the people of Newcastle used to change. The players we are getting in and playing regularly on the PokerPro tables are the newer players who have come from the internet side of things. They want to come into a casino and play poker, but they don’t necessarily want to sit down at a live table with a dealer which can be intimidating to many people. We’re finding they’re the kind of players, the internet style players, that are going for the PokerPro table.”

But the tables have other strengths, as poker is a game steeped in history and manners – well, table etiquette, at least, and Chris says that PokerPro is an ideal way for newer players to learn some of the ropes. “Tthere’s no worries about table etiquette with this machine, which is a worry for new players. For a person who doesn’t know what they’re doing, sitting down at the table and saying ‘Right, I want to bet’ or ‘I want to raise’, they don’t know when to say it, they’ll just be putting chips in. But with PokerPro, that can’t happen. It really helps them, so they can relax and learn the game more easily.”

One way to look at that is that it may be a hindrance to learning the game, as the pressure is not there to pick things up quickly, and also many of the things a new player needs to know are not necessary with PokerPro. But that’s no hindrance, claims Paul, as PokerPro helps eliminate the first set of barriers a new player encounters, which is an important step. “It’s overcoming one barrier at a time. If you sit at PokerPro for a couple of hours, then there’s a whole raft of things that you no longer have to worry about because at the table, there’s a few things that you figure out as you go along. If you’re sitting there playing with other people on the PokerPro, you’ll still learn an awful lot towards playing on a normal table.”

While the PokerPro tables can’t participate in a large tournament with traditional poker tables for a number of reasons (not least the fact that PokerPro can deal more than 50 per cent more hands an hour), Aspers does hold single-table tournaments with 10 players, which take around 45 minutes. It is possible to host a tournament with multiple PokerPro tables, but this is a relatively recent software update and is not yet available everywhere.

The burning question is, of course, are Aspers’ two PokerPro tables making money for the casino? The answer is yes. The casino charges £4 an hour for low-limit poker on traditional tables, but only £3 an hour on PokerPro. It’s just one incentive, as the casino has plenty of ideas how to push the tables. But Paul seems most excited about the potential to charge a rake, which he thinks will be possible from September 1 this year. He explains: “Instead of an hourly fee, we’ll take a percentage of every pot. Obviously, with twice as many hands per hour, we’ll have a substantially lower rake on the Pokerpro than on the real tables, and that’s where it will begin to look far more attractive to the regular player.”

Registration is simple for players, with Chris saying it takes between “15 and 20 seconds, depending on how fast you can type”, and with the smart card method of play, the casino says customers will be far less likely to play beyond their means, which cannot be a bad thing.

With automated table games, staff supervision is fairly limited, so some will be asking themselves how a casino will deal with the possibility of problem gamblers on such a machine. But human interaction is still part of PokerPro’s charm, and as well as the social aspect of poker, players still have to deal with a cashier to top-up their cards.

On top of this, Chris explains a precautionary measure in the system: “There’s a deposit threshold, which once a customer reaches it we have to confirm through two more actions to put the money on to their account. Once this comes around, we can tell them exactly what they’ve put on their account, and we can potentially take them to one side and have a word if necessary.”

PokerTek’s Lou White has stated in a previous issue of Casino International that it is not the intent of PokerTek to replace traditional dealer-based poker with these machines, rather to complement what casinos already have and to serve a whole new market – what’s happening at Aspers is proving him correct, as the machines are helping the casino find brand new poker customers and strengthen its position as the number one poker destination in the North East of England. One question that often raises its head with these tables is how do casino staff feel about them? Chris Brown says the staff have been supportive and can see the benefits of the tables: “The staff like it, they’ve tried to push it as much as they can. There’s been no animosity or anything like that from them, they don’t feel threatened by it at all.”

May sees Aspers Newcastle enjoy a poker festival, and they’re hoping to take on an addition to the PokerPro family – one of the new Heads Up tables, a peer-to-peer version of poker which you’ll never see dealt live as it’s just not profitable in the least. Well, until now, and the arrival of PokerTek’s latest bright idea. Paul concludes: “Heads Up looks fantastic. During the poker festival we’re hoping to have a big Wimbledon-style tournament starting with 128 people, over the week whittling it down to one winner.”

On thing is for sure – there may only be a few installations of these tables in Europe at the moment, but PokerPro is going to take off, and in a big way. Currently, the UK has tables in Ladbrokes Casino, Paddington and Aspers Newcastle. Casino Wiesbaden in Germany has just installed PokerPro and is reportedly planning to take on more tables as soon as it can; casino operators are getting wise to its benefits. Can you afford to ignore this poker revolution?

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