About this app
How to play Mr Thimble
“Three dice, three main bets and a result players can read from across the pit make the game learnable in a single round—an on-ramp for younger guests and for the many players who walk past a craps table because they don’t want to learn it in public,” the company stated.
Its primary deviation from street Cee-lo is that it doesn’t treat 1-2-3 as an automatic loss, or trips or a pair-plus-six as strong wins.
In the casino version, each hand is structured as Bank versus Shooter, with a tie bet available. When the shooter lands 4-5-6, the table yells one word—Headcrack!—and a skull-and-dice display lights up.
50 Cent Headcrack will be offered to commercial casino operators in both traditional and automated dice technology formats.
As of press time, no casino has publicly committed. That conversation, in all likelihood, will take place at G2E, where the real dice will roll.
What is Mr Thimble?
“There are valid arguments to be made in relation to raising the barriers to licensing, but this may come at a cost of diminishing competition and entrepreneurship,” he says.
In any event, successive regulatory tightening and tax increases have already created a “reasonably effective deterrent” to market entry.
There is a second complication. The relentless flow of Commission statements may eventually make enforcement less damaging rather than more.
About Mr Thimble
Its noisy and crowded parlours, he notes, do little to attract Japan’s critical demographic of women aged 40 and over. They “do not find pachi facilities comfortable or appealing”.
Given that women account for nearly 60% of gaming customers in the US, Klebanow argues that Japan’s IRs should instead offer environments where this demographic feels “safe and comfortable”. The key lesson from pachinko, he concludes, is therefore “not to create gaming environments that mimic them”.
Ultimately Leckert remains positive on Japan’s IR opportunity. “Stringent regulation really supports a strong industry,” she says. “I don’t see those being at odds with one another, because it’s been done very successfully elsewhere.”
