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If good client support requires going the extra mile to help, then the pair behind EZ Baccarat can boast of doing thousands of times better.
In addition to devising what has grown into North America’s most popular baccarat brand, “we consider ourselves kind of cultural Sherpas” for operators looking to maximize the game’s appeal, co-creator Francisco “TJ” Tejeda said. “One of the tenets of the brand is continuous service, to be engaged with the operation of the product in casinos. Operator service was part of the essence from the very beginning.”
He described how Robin Powell, the game’s other co-creator and Tejeda’s partner in the Talisman Group consulting firm, responded several years ago when a small Canadian casino with two newly launched EZ Bacc tables sought help because their hold was less than expected. The call came on a January day when Powell was in Aruba on a family vacation. The next day, he flew 3,700 miles to frigid Edmonton, Alberta, where he provided additional training for dealers and addressed other issues during a three-day stay – all at no expense to the operator. Within a year, the game was doing so well that the casino installed four additional EZ Bacc tables.
“Our relationships with operators are really long-term,” Tejeda said. “We continue to check on them and make sure they’re doing well. But most important, we open the channel for them to feel comfortable to reach out for us.”
Last fall, Tejeda volunteered to help Mystic Lake Casino in Minnesota plan a baccarat room after the operator, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Gaming Enterprise, was allowed to expand its card games beyond blackjack.
None of the dealers on staff had ever dealt baccarat, he said. “They were starting from scratch,” and wanted to learn not only the mechanics of the game but also the “cultural subtleties” providing its strong appeal to Asian players. Tejeda said Minneapolis, about 45 minutes from Mystic Lake, has a large Asian community, including many Hmong and Vietnamese.
“You have to make it a neighborhood,” he said of the baccarat room. “(Players) have to feel they can speak Hmong and Vietnamese without anybody making faces at them. This is their country club, and their golf is baccarat.”
As with Powell’s Edmonton trip, Tejeda’s weeklong visit and presentations were at no additional cost to the casino. Mystic Lake’s 12-table baccarat room, featuring a noodle bar and tea station, opened in November.
EZ Baccarat, with about 750 tables in more than 145 North American casinos, eliminates the 5 percent commission the traditional game imposes for payouts on a winning Bank hand, thus speeding up the game dramatically. To offset the lack of a commission, a bet on Bank pushes if the hand wins with a three-card 7. EZ Baccarat offers four side bets with fixed payout schedules and one with a progressive jackpot. Galaxy Gaming distributes it in North America at a fixed price of $600 per table per month, with the operator keeping all revenue – the same as it was in 2008, when the game was first placed in a casino.
“If you want to have baccarat, then out of respect and out of business sense, you have to pay attention to the cultural differences (players) bring to your casino,” Tejeda said. “It’s an entire environment that is very defined, and it’s got some unwritten rules, but you’ll know pretty quickly whether you’re doing things right.”
Tejeda and Powell have vast experience in the casino industry, each starting as a dealer and advancing to senior management positions and international responsibilities, so they have a career’s worth of service dos and don’ts.
“We accumulated this list of wishes we would like to see if we ever got in position to make a difference,” Tejeda said, and the development of EZ Baccarat opened the door. “We wanted to have a relationship with operators that goes beyond the physical product and helps them run that product successfully.”