It was an old Playboy Club casino pro who remarked on the difference between London's ICE gaming showpiece and any other gaming show: "The industry people from around the world come over to ICE to do business, and not to get distracted with side shows where food and drink samples take expo time from the exhibitors. This year's ICE has been just great!"

At times it has seemed that ICE's general meeting point was the well appointed ACE A&G stand, right in the centre of the main avenue that leads from the Warwick Road access through the ground floor ATE expo and into ICE proper. Ricki Chavez-Munoz, Senior Vice President of the Korean gaming systems manufacturers is leading the presentation of the company's leading product ACENET ASCOT and, with more than 30 years in the industry as operator and developer, many friends, ex colleagues and acquaintances called in at the stand for a chat and a product demo.

We saw David Marshall, French leading operator Lucienne Barriere’s Director for Development, exchange news, stories and product impressions with Ricki early in the morning. But not as early as John Snowball, former French Roulette Chef d'Table and casino operator now plying his trade in India, who was discussing a deal for ACE's virtual horse racing game. The visits flowed all day, and Ricki commented that ICE is the very best show for meeting industry pioneers.

Having mentioned Playboy, we can report that Bally Technologies had four lovely Playmates on show for the presentation of its new Alpha platform, to improve the game's graphics and game experience, with the 'Playboy Mystery Jackpot', which is a multi level progressive with "Centerfold Bonus Round" and "Playboy Strip Poker". US Vice Presidents of the company, Gavin Issacs and Marcus Prater, were on hand to greet a large number of visitors, who surely were there just to see how great the games are!

Daniel Braudo, President of Argentine gaming distributors Frontier brought us news from the GPI stand, where the gaming chips world leader has gone one up on his RFID (Radio Frequency ID) products by developing the chips control system Electronic Chip Surveillance (ECS). Amongst the new GPI products, the company presented a poker table with an embedded reader that can count up to 800 chips and work out the house commission. (S-01.25.07)

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