The KING CARDS of

For this issue’s cover story, David Mahon, founder of Full Color® Games sits down with Ramona Depares to explain how he’s created the world’s first and only new class of card and casino gaming.

YOURS IS A STORY OF REINVENTION. THESE CARD GAMES ARE MASSIVELY POPULAR - IS THIS A CASE OF TRYING TO FIX WHAT ISN’T BROKEN?

My inventions in Full Color® Games aren’t about fixing what isn’t broken, they are more about solving the problem of player choice through actual gaming innovation instead of game regurgitation - a problem that plagues the industry on one side of the coin while leaving players wishing that someone, anyone, would come up with something new on the other…something that is truly revolutionary and different on one hand, yet completely familiar on the other.

The unexpected part of my story is that I didn’t set out to create or invent Full Color® Games, nor did I choose to attempt to solve any player’s problem of choice … it chose me. I was actually just trying to that’s never been done, at least not until my invention in Full Color® Cards as evidence of just how hard it is to do. The same problem exists in every format. You will never have a new way to play bingo, keno or lotto until someone invents a new set of means and methods to draw and match them to. You will never have a new way to play craps or sic bo until someone invents a new set of means and methods to roll dice and score them to and so on and so forth.

So how do you create an entirely new set of means and methods that are completely different from the existing cards, dice, balls, wheels that you already know, to create an entirely new class of casino gaming that isn’t just limited to technological innovation?

Sounds impossible, right? But you just used Full Color® Cards (my means) to play

21 or Nothing® (my methods) and instantly discovered that it does in fact play exactly like blackjack on one hand and does things that are not even possible in blackjack on the other, all of which creates the secret sauce in Full Color® Games and, it doesn’t stop there, it does the exact same thing in my Full Color® Baccarat, Full Color® Poker and even non-casino games like Full Color® Solitaire. Once you see how it works in all my other formats of Full Color® Bingo, Full Color® Slots, Full Color® Craps, Full Color® Roulette, Full Color® Lotto, Full Color® Sic Bo, you’ll discover that my new means and methods truly do create an entirely new class of card and casino gaming.

Technological innovation solves many execution problems, like how video poker solved the problem of how to deal 100,000 rounds per hour electronically with a random number generator to a single player up from create a “lottery-sized, skill-based cash accumulation method” for jackpot prize payouts for a next-generation reality television show format I was creating with my business partners who are the original producers of Survivor® and The Apprentice®. It’s all just a crazy accident in how it happened and how it has evolved into what it is today.

So far as player choice, there is only one way to play every casino gaming format in the world. In card gaming for example, there will never truly be a new way to play blackjack, baccarat, or poker until someone invents a new universal deck of playing cards, but as history has proven, a maximum of 100 dealt out by hand, as well as the total reversal of that with how live dealers online solved the problem in how to deal a single game to 10,000 baccarat players on a single table all at the same time by scanning physical cards and remotely displaying them on 10,000 unique electronic devices all over the world, but none of it, as genius as those innovations are, creates any new content. The game of 5 card draw is still drawing five cards from the same deck of playing cards and baccarat is still a game of 9’s regardless of whether a computer or a human being deals the games to one player or the whole world all at the same time.

The invention of Full Color® Games and my Full Color® Gaming System truly innovates by using new “means and methods” necessary to create new paradigms that rest inside my mathematical formulas to deliver alternatives ways to play all the original formats that were never even possible until now.

Together they create incredible new dynamics and new ways to play while simultaneously simplifying the rule sets to create a far more balanced set of gaming action so players play even longer. All of it creates far more entertainment and value for their money resulting in player’s having wildly fun new experiences where they have absolutely no desire to ever go back to the traditional games that don’t have these dynamics. When you have that kind of player response, then you have true disruption and that is when you have a real revolution begin to take shape – which is exactly what is happening for us now.

THE END RESULT IS PRETTY REVOLUTIONARY, YOU’VE ESSENTIALLY RETHOUGHT THE ENTIRE CASINO GAMING PROCESS - TELL US, HOW DOES IT WORK EXACTLY?

Well, let’s start with Full Color® Cards. As you yourself just discovered today when you saw and played 21 or Nothing® together for the first time before we sat down here: What looks like a new deck of cards, is actually an entirely new set of casino gaming math formulas. What you experienced is the amalgamation of one version of it in a human readable form of playing cards that gives you an entirely new way to play blackjack - and as you admitted, it is in fact blackjack, yet it is a completely different game unlike anything you’ve ever played before or even could with a traditional deck of cards. And that’s just the beginning, as my Full Color® Gaming System uses its math paradigms to create a brand-new way to play every casino gaming format in the world as I just mentioned.

It took me years to figure out what to do with this paradigm across all the formats. It started out years back when I created the first incarnation of what is now Full Color® Bingo, but I really didn’t have the “flux capacitor moment” until I figured out how to make it work in the blackjack and baccarat formats, and when I did, it unlocked everything for me at that point.

It is so ridiculously simple after you figure it out, but otherwise impossible until you do. It’s the simple stupid things in life that actually change the world, ones that are discovered in an instant or a “flash of genius”, that create the intellectual property that changes the course of history. In fact, the “flash of genius doctrine” was a test for patentability used by the United States Federal Courts for just over a decade, beginning circa 1940. The doctrine was formalized by the U.S. Supreme Court which held that “the inventive act had to come into the mind of an inventor in a ‘flash of genius’ and not as a result of tinkering”.

Now I wouldn’t say I am a genius by any measure and that I did indeed spend years tinkering, but when I had my “flash of genius” moment as they say, it did indeed happen in an instant when I was use the Adobe “Flash” animation program (an application literally named “Flash” of all things for poetic irony) for a pitch presentation when I digitally cut up my white bingo board and stacked the numbered pieces in a row below their identically numbered color cards I was matching them to and voilà, there it was… my “Eureka” moment and epiphany to it all! I had always had my deck of “four suits of colored cards”, I just never realized that the white spaces were in fact a “fifth suit of white cards” that were the key to creating perfectly balanced game results. And there it was, the math paradigm I needed to make it work across all other formats from there on out.

The math formula is as elementary as it gets. In the card gaming formats, all the Color Cards™ are positive, all White Cards™ are negative – it is that simple stupid. I immediately started to formally do the casino gaming math, trying to figure out if I could prove on paper what I could see in my head and prove it would balance and sure enough I did.

The simple stupid part of it all is that I turned a traditional deck of cards that we have all used for a lifetime and simplifying and reducing it from being a 3-part card system of “suit, rank and class” down to a 2-part card system of just “suit and rank”.

Full Color® Cards changes the face of gaming, literally, by removing all the aces and faces off of a deck of cards because they are simply just not necessary while changing the suits of diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades to just four colored suits and eliminating all of the indicia. That killed all of the redundant cards of Jack, Queens and Kings, because they are truly not necessary. By that measure, I’ve killed the four Kings in a real life “game of thrones” through a battle of playing cards! I guess that’s why they call me the new “King of Cards” in spirit and honor of the past that lasted for over 600 years!

In all seriousness, I just simplified everything down to 4 color suits of positive values and added what could be called a fifth dimension, a single white suit of negative values where all color cards increase your score and all white cards decrease it that creates an entirely new set of up and down gaming action created by my positive and negative math paradigms.

So, if you know how to play the original games, you know how to play the alternative of it in Full Color® Games and once you discover all the new features, functions, and incredible dynamics to my games, you’ll never go back to the originals.

Although casino games are by nature, simple for the player, they are anything but for the creator and for those that regulate us to make sure that it’s fair for the player. The most difficult part of it is getting the math certified. That was scary part, I’m glad to say that it is not only certified by BMM Testlabs but I’ve also had it double certified by GLI.

THE MATHS MUST BE A MASSIVE NIGHTMARE TO GET RIGHT. DO YOU HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE IN THIS SECTOR?

Actually I have no math experience and I’ve never worked for any casino gaming company in the world. I don’t have any formal training …it’s just kind of comes naturally for me. All casino games are based on the laws of probability and the frequency in which they occur, I just have this ability to see billions of units of numbers in my head, their frequencies and patterns in game results based on rule sets they are governed by, but it’s hard to explain. It’s just feels like common sense to me. I put an algorithm in place for every conceivable way to play the game, including ways to defraud the House and built software to implement it all. I was running 61 computers, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to return a result on absolutely every variable I could conceive for comparative analysis. I did it 1800 different ways, made 3.2 billion calculations, and then took it to BMM. They said it would take an estimated 9-12 months to get it certified. I said that was impossible, it couldn’t take that long, because I did my first round of math in 1 hour and 21 minutes and did the full math in about four weeks.

The scary part came when I was told by the gaming control board that we could not exhibit without certified math, or the certifications I did not have! Desperate to get a certification done before my first gaming conventionwhich was starting in 31 days, I must confess and say, I made the biggest gamble of my life because I bet the entire company and my reputation on the fact that I knew my math was flawless even if BMM did not.

Stressed beyond words of not knowing this in advance of booking the convention I had spent an enormous amount of money on, I made a wager (of sorts) with BMM. I asked them if they could at least run the first set of math based on my rule sets within 30 days, or one day before the deadline of the start of the show. They said that was possible. I asked how much for the first set of math test results. They said $12,000. I said, “Okay, I’ll risk spending (bet) $12,000 that my math and your math results come out exactly the same on the first pass”. They thought I was crazy, and said, “sure we’ll take your money”. Twenty-nine days later, they perfectly matched and they certified my math, validated my sanity, and the rest as they say, is history!

WHAT IS THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS LIKE?

It’s a long, slow, and painful process because it’s not about you, it’s about the player. The gatekeepers must ensure they protect the player at all times, be it the independent testing labs, the regulators, the auditors, or the operators. They also need to make sure the game is fair and reasonable, and that all the rules and laws that govern them have been addressed. It didn’t matter that I'd already proved it on my own, the independent test labs still had to tear it apart and prove it themselves because the regulators rely on their independent integrity tests.

In the case of card gaming, one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to do math is because there are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on earth and in a game where the player gets the choice to draw or not draw cards, the variables become all but infinite. The process is mindnumbing in many regards.

Along the way, in the instance of blackjack, I have solved the multibillion-dollar problem of card counting. It is now impossible to count cards in my games as you don't know if the score is going to go up or down anymore creating the purest form of unpredictability while statistically ensuring that the player will never play the same game twice, ever, which invisibly puts an end to game fatigue as well. The same goes for baccarat and all the other formats just the same

The hardest part of the process is that no one in the industry will teach you how it works from start to finish and for that reason, it’s a very expensive, slow, and treacherous journey, but an incredible process in the end, one that I could now write books about or teach a college class on.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE REACTIONS SO FAR, ARE YOU WORRIED THAT THE PLAYERS MIGHT NOT WANT TO BOTHER LEARNING NEW RULES WHEN THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW THE OLD GAME WORKS?

Are you sure you’re not an operator?! This is a great question every operator seems to ask me. How are we going to educate players? How are we going to train them? They all say, “If you can solve that problem, you are likely to take nothing less than 50% of the blackjack market and a huge portion of the baccarat market” just for starters.

As a result, I put forth a Herculean effort to build out the educational quick tips and helping hands along with translating it all into 43 different languages making the RGS available in 45 different fiat and cryptocurrencies from the start. We did everything we could to build out a super high-quality product for both the operators and the players.

Beyond that, we have made first formats available for every type of player. We have our own live dealer studios, multiplayer RNG live casino format and private tables as well as skill-based versions for tournament game play in both social and real money gaming. We have revolutionary “No Bet, Side Bets” called Russian Roulette™ that doesn’t require the player to make additional wagers to obtain premium payouts that creates a “craps like” emotional high on the table when the players play it. It is easily the most popular element in 21 or Nothing®. Imagine that a side bet that is more popular than the main bet! We have live interactive in-game side bets in Full Color® Baccarat, one-ofa-kind “Session Bets” that create the world’s largest possible progressive jackpots that can dwarf even the largest lotto payout ever made, all made possible by my new paradigm inside my formulas.

SO, YOU’RE HERE IN MALTA – DOES THIS MEAN THERE’S ANY PLANS FOR A MALTA OFFICE?

Yes! One of the most exciting events in the company’s history is when we obtained a Type 1 B2B critical games supplier licence from the Malta Gaming Authority that has enabled us to integrate into some of the largest aggregators and operators in the world. Not only do we have new offices here, but we’ll also have an exhibition booth at SiGMA Malta in November with our live tables and interactive RGS so we can do full demos of the games to everyone that would like to come by and experience it all in person! SiGMA Europe 2021 |

One Of The Largest Gaming Exhibitions In Europe

YOUR PRODUCT VIDEOS ARE VERY POLISHED MOVIE TRAILERS, HOW IMPORTANT IS IMAGE?

It is extremely important. The irony of all of this is that the birth of Full Color® Games came out of my process of creating television shows. I’ve been around Hollywood and Beverly Hills my whole life and I’ve had the extraordinary fortune of being around so many super talented and successful people - and each one of them adds a different color to the rainbow (all puns intended).

They all give you little nuggets about how branding works, doesn’t work, and above all, how content is king. I’ve tried to replicate their globalization strategies and even baked that into all my product trailers, right down to hiring the “Voice of God” to come in and make it have a theatrical look and feel!

So as Full Color® Games life started in television, we intend to grow it there just the same. In fact, we have put together an “experiential television” reality-based TV show to grow and build the brand a global broadcast - where consumers don’t just watch the show, they are the show and anyone, anywhere can participate in every element of what it takes to create and disrupt a multi-billiondollar industry and personally make money off it. Every episode includes challenge-based competitions that open up the opportunity for people to compete for every major position in the company as we launch in 43 languages, and broadcast to over 100 countries around the world in the same ways that social media sites and apps allow people to influence others and broadcast themselves, and individually profit from it, according to their own talents.

We can’t tell you all the elements of it, but we have some of the biggest agents and publicists in Hollywood that are helping us put this together, taking the Full Color® Games brand to the global marketplace, educating a world full of players and so much more! You never know, we could very well turn the company into the single largest casino gaming enterprise on earth if executed properly to its fullest potential! No matter what happens, we have changed the face of gaming and are solving the problem of player choice! And it all started right here, with our friends at SiGMA!

A Mixed Bag Of Beans

DER NEUE STAATVERTRAG: GEMISCHTE GEFÜHLE

THREE MONTHS ON FROM THE LAUNCH OF GERMANY’S NEW INTERSTATE TREATY ON GAMBLING, DSWV PRESIDENT MATHIAS DAHMS LOOKS AT EVERYTHING FROM OVER REGULATION TO PROBLEM GAMBLERS.

DREI MONATE NACH INKRAFTTRETEN VON DEUTSCHLANDS NEUEM GLÜCKSSPIELSTAATSVERTRAG, SIEHT SICH DSWV PRÄSIDENT MATHIAS DAHMS MAL ALLES VON DEN REGULIERUNGEN UND PROBLEMSPIELERN GANZ GENAU AN.

After years of intense political discussions in Germany the new Interstate Treaty on Gambling came into force on 1 July 2021. For the first time German punters are able to wager, spin and bluff in a regulated online environment. As of July 2021, there are 35 sports betting licensees. Applications for online slot and poker games are being prepared. And a central regulatory authority is on the horizon.

Yet, the expectations for the development of the gambling market in Europe’s largest economy are muted. German regulators and politicians seem unwilling to consider lessons learned in more mature online gambling markets. A mixture of over-regulation, fiscal zealousness and state protectionism is casting a shadow on the German market.

The most acute problem in the last months has been the drastic shift of market shares to operators who are willing to disregard the new regulations. A survey conducted by DSWV among its members showed that several weeks after new restrictions on slot games had come into force, more than 50 percent of revenues had shifted away from law-abiding operators. At the same time there is an acute lack of enforcement against unlicensed operators that does not bode well for licensees.

Regulators seem to be unaware of the tectonic shifts in market shares, or they do not want to acknowledge them. For years trade associations and operators had warned that overly strict rules and restrictions will drive German customers to black market operators. We now see this scenario unfold in real time and with stronger effect than expected.

To make matters worse, there is no uniform deadline or cut-off date for the licencing procedure or when certain ancillary licencing conditions will have to be met. As a result, some operators are already in full implementation mode whereas others are dragging their feet. In order to restore a level playing field the sports betting licencing procedure should be finalised as soon as possible and gambling authorities should set uniform deadlines for the implementation of licensing conditions for all licensed operators.

EINEN FOKUS AUF

PROBLEMSPIELER

UND SELBSTAUSSCHLUSSMÖGLICHKEITEN

Nach Jahren intensiver politischer Diskussion in Deutschland trat der Glücksspielstaatsvertrag am 1.Juli 2021 in Kraft. Zum ersten Mal können deutsche Spieler in einer regulierten Online-Umgebung zocken, drehen und bluffen. Jetzt im Juli 2021, gibt es 35 Sportwettlizenzen. Anwendungen für virtuelle Spielautomaten und Pokerspiele werden vorbereitet und eine zentralisierte Regulierungsbehörde ist bereits in Aussicht.

Dennoch sind die Erwartungen an den Glücksspielmarkt in Europas größter Volkswirtschaft gedeckt. Deutsche Aufsichtsbehörden und Politiker scheinen nicht gewillt zu sein von Erkenntnissen ausgereifter Glücksspielmärkte zu lernen. Eine Mischung aus Überregulierung, Steuereifer und staatlichem Protektionismus wirft ihren Schatten auf den deutschen Markt.

Das akuteste Problem der letzten Monate war der drastische Übergang großer Marktanteile zu Betreibern die gewillt waren die neuen Regulierungen zu missachten. Eine Umfrage der DSWV unter Mitgliedern zeigte, dass einige Wochen nachdem die neuen Einschränkungen auf Automatenspiele in Kraft traten, mehr als 50% der Umsätze von gesetzestreuen Anbietern abdrifteten. Gleichzeitig besteht der akute Mangel an Vollstreckungsmaßnahmen gegen ungenehmigte Betreiber, was nichts Gutes für Lizenzhalter verheißt.

Noch schlimmer, es gibt nicht einmal eine einheitliche Frist für das Ende der Lizenzverfahren oder für wann bestimmte untergeordnete Lizenzbedingungen erfüllt sein müssen. Daraus folgt, dass einige Betreiber bereits in vollem Umsetzungsmodus sind während andere sich schleifen lassen. Um wieder ein ebenes Spielfeld herzustellen, sollte das Lizenzverfahren für Sportwetten so bald wie möglich finalisiert werden und Glücksspielbehörden sollten einheitliche Fristen für die Umsetzung der Lizenzbedingungen für alle genehmigten Betreiber festlegen.

The fractured nature of federal bureaucracy also means that the new central regulatory authoritywhose establishment we welcome - is not going to take up its work until 2023. In the meantime, responsibility for gambling regulation is split between authorities in Hesse, Saxony-Anhalt and the ominous Council of Gambling regulators, the “Glücksspielkollegium”.