Article Excerpt:
TWST: What is PokerTek?Mr. White: PokerTek is predominantly a software company that is exclusively focused on bringing technology to the game of poker to meet two goals ' making poker a better, faster experience for the poker player, and increasing the profitability of poker for the operators. I started the company a couple of years ago with Lyle Berman, James Crawford and Lee Lomax. We all saw this tsunami wave of interest in poker coming at the industry, which is a great thing. But from an operator's perspective, it actually creates some problems because poker has not traditionally been the most profitable part of the casino, yet more and more of their patrons are coming in and wanting to play poker. So we asked ourselves, given that interest in poker is going to continue to grow, what can we do for the operators to help increase the profitability of this new wave of players coming at them? That was what we started out with. The PokerPro_ table is our first step toward that goal. It is a fully automated poker table that deals 50% to 60% more hands per hour than any human dealer. The players love it for the following three reasons. You can only make money when you're in a pot, and the players get to see 50% more hands and, from their perspective, you go from playing online, which is lightning fast, to going into a brick and mortar room, which can become dreadfully slow. So it speeds up the game for the players, and players like that. Secondly, for the player, it eliminates mistakes. The mistakes that can happen at a poker table are endless, and the problem is that it is a zero sum game. When a mistake happens and it is not clear to the dealer what they should do next, in terms of who wins the pot, a supervisor has to come over, make a ruling, and someone wins and someone loses. The PokerPro table eliminates all mistakes that can happen because the computer will not allow a mistake to happen. The third thing the technology does for the players is that it eliminates a need to tip the dealer, which cuts into the poker player's net profits, $1 or $2 at a time. So there are lots of benefits for the players, and the obvious benefit for the operator is increased revenue and decreased labor expenses. In a nutshell, that is what PokerTek was founded to do and it's what we're executing on.
Tickers included in this excerpt: PTEK
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