GSA Certification And New Features Marc McDermott, Technical Director

GSA PLATINUM MEMBERS

What is GSA? The Gaming Standards Association (GSA) is an international trade association that creates benefits for gaming manufacturers, suppliers, operators and regulators. We facilitate the identification, definition, development, promotion, and implementation of open standards to enable innovation, education, and communication for the benefit of the entire industry.

What Does GSA Do? GSA Develops Communication Standards –GSA develops Communication standards designed specifically for the Gaming industry. –GSA does not develop Regulatory standards –GSA does not design gaming applications –GSA does not write gaming software

GSA Certification What Is GSA Certification? –GSA Certification is program designed to provide assurance to regulators and operators that the communications will work as expected. –GSA Certification is not Regulatory certification

Who conducts the Certification? GSA Certification is Conducted by GSA Recognized Test Laboratories Minimum criteria is ISO accreditation with a GSA scope Must be recognized by GSA Board as suitable Two labs have successfully completed the requirements

How Does GSA Certification Work? Certification is for Specific Functional Groups A functional group is a set of G2S or S2S commands that provide support for a particular business function –Redeem a voucher (G2S) –Download software (G2S) –Issue a Jackpot (S2S) –Void a comp (S2S) Certification is for specific a specific protocol version. –S2S 1.3.1, –G2S 1.0.3, –etc.

What GSA Certification Looks Like GUESTFULLCLASS/BUSINESS FUNCTIONAL GROUP Communications Class Communications point to point - (mandatory) Communications - Multicast Cabinet Class Meters Class Voucher Class Voucher – issue voucher Voucher – redeem voucher Handpay How to Specify Your Requirements: GSA Certification Checklist

Example of a Functional Group Functional Group From - toRequestResponse Communications - Multicast EGM-Host getMcastKeyUpdatemcastKeyUpdate Host-EGM joinMcastjoinMcastAck leaveMcastleaveMcastAck getMcastListmcastList mcastKeyUpdatemcastKeyUpdateAck The commands that make up the Multicast Functional Group

How Does this Work? GSA Certification Process GSA Committees decide on the certification criteria. Testing agencies report passing test results to GSA GSA issues a certificate and posts the certificate on the GSA website GSA Certificate Identifies the functional groups tested GSA does not post non-passing test results

Is Everything tested? All functional groups are tested All functional groups must meet the requirements to be certified. All passing results will be posted on the GSA website

The Certification Program Status Where is Certification now? G2S Certification for is available for EGMs S2S Certification is available for versions and Certification for G2S hosts is under development –Expect a program for Summer of 2009

GSA Certification Feedback Loop? The most important part of the certification program is the GSA Certification feedback loop – Your Participation is vital to the success of the Certification Program

Where Do My Needs Fit In The Certification program will be adjusted to meet the needs of the industry –Pass/fail criteria will be adjusted for business requirements –Functional groups will be adjusted to meet business requirements Input from Operators, Regulators, Manufacturers, and Test Labs all make the program better Bugs found are brought forward and corrections are made –Adjustments in protocol –Adjustments in test procedures –Adjustment in test scripts

How Do I Benefit from Certification? Everyone wins with GSA Certification –Operators have an assurance that communications are correctly implemented –Regulators can start with their regulatory compliance without communication errors –Regulators and Operators can report problems with Certified products –Manufacturers can use certification as an indication of their commitment to proper implementation

Certification Questions? Questions? Marc McDermott

Where We are Going What’s Next???

New Features – What’s in Store The G2S and S2S protocols are being implemented and deployed in the field. The GDS protocol is taking hold as well The basics are done – now it’s time to push the communications envelope

What Areas are We Looking At? GSA will be working on providing unprecedented communication capability –Enhance the Customer experience –Allow for communications between all the business units in a casino –Provide new ways to communicate with your players –Provide new ways to provide comps to your players –Provide new ways to find new players.

Custom Ticketing The GDS protocol supports download of custom templates. Templates can be designed to customize the tickets and coupons printed at the EGM or elsewhere in the property (cashier station, kiosk, etc.)

Custom Ticketing Tickets are printed from a template stored on the printer In GDS a ticket template may be formatted into regions Regions contain the text that may be sent to the printer with each print command Regions allow for custom text to be printed Example Template #1

Custom Ticketing To print the ticket, send the print command with the region information printTicket templateIndex = 1 printRegion regionIndex =1 regionData = “Your Tribe’s Resort and Casino” printRegion regionIndex = 2 regionData = “ ” printRegion regionIndex = 3 regionData = “$25.50” etc. etc. etc.

Custom Ticketing The resulting ticket being a custom ticket with the patron’s name on it. The Player’s name was sent in region 6 and was acquired from the player’s loyalty card

Custom Ticketing The advantage to regulators: Easier to detect suspicious patterns (if cards are required) More security –Eliminate stolen or copied tickets –ID can be used for redeeming offline or high value tickets If Mr Schlump cashes the ticket… Pay the ticket

Custom Ticketing If someone else cashes the ticket …. Maybe you ask some more questions

Custom Ticketing The advantage for Operators is enhanced customer experience Personalized tickets provide more player recognition GDS’ UTF-16 support can enable printing of the special non-ASCII characters (eventually including all characters) providing a correct representation of the player’s name in the player’s native language

Custom Ticketing Regulatory and Operator Questions –Does the Player Tracking System communicate with the voucher system? –What Character set do you need? –Do the existing templates in the printer support the fields you want to print? –Can you download new templates? –Can you send the custom information to your printer?

Expand Your Customer Base Expand your customer base through cooperative marketing Partner outside your jurisdiction Create patron loyalty through cooperative advertising and points transfer The capability exists in S2S to support this feature

Expand Your Customer Base As customers travel, the idea is to provide them a reason to pick your operation Identify new opportunities for your customers Let your partners identify new customers for you

Expand Your Customer Base S2S allows for points transfer rates – for example, 2 of your points is worth 1 of my points. Configuration options allow for custom tuning of the exchange rate for specific partners and specific customers. The communications support for this capability currently exists in the S2S protocol

Expand Your Customer Base Regulatory and Operator Questions –Is this legal in your jurisdiction? –What are the tax ramifications, if any, for the partner casinos? –Who controls the exchange rate? –Is the communications link secure between the partners? –How is the patron database managed? –How much access is granted and how much information is exposed?

Offline Validation Vouchers/Tickets make casinos more efficient Customers prefer tickets over coins However, our reliance on tickets is such that: –When the ticket system is down –The floor is down.

Offline Validation A ticketing system that is up 99% of the time is still down for more than 87 hours/year A ticket system that is up 95% is down for more than 18 days/year. When the ticket system is offline, tickets printed: –Can be copied –Cannot be validated by the system –In some cases, regulation prohibits issuing or cashing offline vouchers

Offline Validation The Problem: There is no reasonable way to validate offline tickets with the current system. However the G2S based system provides a secure method of validating offline vouchers The G2S method has been deemed satisfactory for redeeming offline vouchers/tickets by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (Tech Std 3.050(11))

Offline Validation G2S Offline Validation is based on a secret seed/validation ID pair, the unique EGM number and the dollar value of the voucher The secret seed and validation Identification number are sent to the EGM and stored. The number of stored number pairs is a configurable item and determines the number of offline vouchers that may be generated.

Offline Validation To generate an offline voucher, the EGM ID, validation Id, secret seed and the ticket amount are made into a single long string of characters. The long string is run through an MD5 HASH algorithm The result is the 32 character Authentication ID

Offline Validation Generating an Offline Voucher

Offline Validation For an offline redeemable voucher, the validation number, the EGM ID, and the value of the voucher and the authentication number are printed on the ticket The secret seed IS NOT printed on the voucher

Offline Validation To Redeem an offline voucher, the information on the ticket: EGM ID, validation ID, Dollar Value of the voucher, and the authentication ID are entered at a cashier station The cashier station retrieves the secret seed that corresponds to the validation ID on the voucher The cashier station re-runs the MD5 HASH. If the resulting authentication ID matches the one on the ticket, the ticket is valid and may be paid.

Offline Validation Redeem a ticket

Offline Validation Regulatory and Operator Concerns –Are offline tickets/vouchers allowed in your jurisdiction? –Is there a limit to the number of offline vouchers that may be printed. –Is your cashier station capable of redeeming offline vouchers?

Questions? Marc McDermott