BLACK HAWK, Colorado — Angel Espino knows his way around a deck of cards.
On a recent Friday afternoon, the veteran dealer stood behind a buffalo blackjack table inside the Ameristar casino off Black Hawk’s main drag, swiftly doling out cards to a lone player.
Deal, hit, bust, repeat.
The hands — some involving hundreds of dollars — take less than 30 seconds. After all, the house makes more money if dealers keep things moving.
This is Espino’s job, but all the hours at the table also serve as critical research and development for his true love: inventing the next generation of casino games.
“The gaming industry has been asleep at the wheel,” Espino said. “The industry needs something fresh.”
Seven years ago, Espino joined forces with four other Black Hawk dealers to form Casino Gaming Development, a company that builds new table games for gambling establishments. They add twists to old staples: poker, blackjack and baccarat — pumping in more action, more ways to bet.
The company is starting to take off, winning first-place industry awards at global conferences. Players can now place bets on their games at casinos in four states, including Colorado. But Espino and his crew have bigger dreams.
“We’re Apple, we’re Microsoft in the garage,” Espino said. “We think we can be Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.”
Building a gaming empire
Espino got his start in the gaming industry back in 1997. He had just been laid off from his factory job in El Paso, Texas. A coworker told him they were hiring blackjack dealers at a nearby casino for slightly above minimum wage.
“I fell in love with the industry, the craft,” he said.
The former Army combat medic used the G.I. Bill to earn a degree in design. That background, combined with years of experience dealing cards, made game design a natural fit.
His first game idea was solidified nine years ago while dealing to a player at a blackjack table. The man knew the game inside and out — when to hit, when to stay. He grew upset when he hit and busted, knowing the strategy was sound.
“I said, ‘Why not hit, but if you don’t like the card you can burn it,’” Espino recalled.
The man loved it: “I would pay to burn that card,” he said.
Thus “Blackjack Burnout” was born. The game looks like regular blackjack, only players get one chance to replace a bad card for the next one in the deck.
The gaming director at the Saratoga casino in Black Hawk liked the concept, and by August 2017, the game made its way to tables in the casino.
Espino built his team with experienced casino dealers who live and breathe this world all day, every day. They talk to players about games and features they like or hate. They absorb the lingo gamblers are using and know which games dealers like to work.
“Ninety percent of game developers don’t work in the industry,” said Tommy Thammavongkeo, an Ameristar dealer who works for the company. “That’s where our edge is.”
The company believes there’s a huge vacuum in gaming innovation due to creative stagnation across the industry.
“Walk into casinos and they spend hundreds of millions to make the place look beautiful, but table games seem 40 years behind,” said Collin Feindt, 36, one of the company’s employees. “It seemed like a real possibility for us.”
You have to be able to explain a game in two sentences, Espino said. It can’t be full of complicated rules.
The company operates on a set of principles as it builds new table games: entertainment is key; minimize dealer and player error; innovate; ensure it’s profitable for the house.
It costs roughly $50,000 for a game to be developed from ideation to implementation. Espino and his team research to make sure the game doesn’t already exist. Then there’s patent and copywriting. A mathematician calculates the odds.
The company also hires people known as “advantage players” — people who abide by the law but take advantage of small edges — to make sure the game doesn’t have vulnerabilities.
“We’d rather find out now before we invest the time and resources into a game,” Espino said.
Location, timing and geography matter. A game that’s big in Las Vegas might not be in Colorado. Some games, such as baccarat, are wildly popular in Asia but are now catching on in the United States.
The company recognizes the odds are stacked against them. Most casinos are set with their tried-and-true games that have been popular for decades, Espino said. It can be hard to break through to get someone to take a chance on a new idea that doesn’t have a proven track record.
Espino estimates that 5% of all games that are developed make the casino floor. Just 5% of those games are successful and survive the test of time.
“You have to be really crazy or stupid to get into this,” he joked.
“I think we’re both,” Thammavongkeo added.
“A dream come true”
Casino Gaming Development is starting to see the fruits of its labor.
The company earned back-to-back first-place awards at the Global Game Protection and Table Games Conference, the premier industry conference held annually in Las Vegas. The Colorado group previously was named the gold award winner for best new table game of the year at the Cutting Edge Tables Games Conference.
In October, Espino and Co. inked a deal with ODDSworks, a remote gaming operator, to bring the company’s new “3 Shot Poker” game to the online platform.
A variation of “3 Card Poker,” the multi-action game gives players three chances to win on every hand, as opposed to one chance in the standard game.
Players get dealt two hold cards, with three community cards laid out on the table. Players are able, then, to make multiple hands using their own cards, plus the ones in the middle. A Royal Flush pays out 50-to-1 odds.
Last month, the crew flew to Nevada to watch “3 Shot Poker” go live at the Flamingo casino on the famed Las Vegas Strip. The creators trained staff there on the new game and then watched with pride as players lined up to throw down their chips.
“This guy worked two weeks for a paycheck and decided to sit down and play our game,” Thammavongkeo said. “It was confirmation of all the hours we put in, that it’s worth it.”
It’s one thing to have your game be successful in a smaller market like Black Hawk. Vegas — the pinnacle of American gambling — is a whole other animal.
“It was a dream come true,” Feindt said.
The company has high ambitions. They’re in talks to bring their games to international casinos, further expanding the Casino Gaming Development footprint. One day they hope to quit their day jobs at the casinos and make game development a full-time career.
“In this lifetime the only thing you can leave is your legacy,” Thammavongkeo said. “What we do is to pay the bills, but this is greater. It’s changing the industry that’s been stagnant forever.”
