Gaming intelligence system and method

1. A method executable on an electronic computing device of correlating player and game theme transaction information from two sets of gaming transaction information obtained from a plurality of gaming machines wherein each gaming machine plays at least one of a plurality of machine themes, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving player transaction information, the player transaction information consisting of machine id, player id, coin in and coin out on a plurality of players;

receiving machine theme transaction information consisting of machine id, theme played, coin in and coin out on at least one of a plurality of machine themes, wherein the machine theme transaction information is independent of the player transaction information;

generating correlated transaction information on the machine themes played by the plurality of players using a goodness measure, by correlating the player transaction information and the independent machine theme transaction information, wherein the correlated transaction information includes machine id, player id, theme played, coin in and coin out; and

using the correlated transaction information to optimize gaming operations by altering the machine layout.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the allocation of transaction information is optimized using an iterative process.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein iteration is directed by the goodness measure.

4. The method as claimed in claim 3 wherein an attribute of the goodness measure is transaction information sparcity.

5. The method as claimed in claim 3 wherein an attribute of the goodness measure is related to one or more ratio of transaction information.

6. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein an attribute of the goodness measure is related to one or more ratio of transaction information.

7. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein weightings are applied to attributes.

8. The method as claimed in claim 7 wherein weightings change over iterations.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8 wherein transaction information sparcity has a higher weighting for earlier iterations than later iterations.

10. The method as claimed in claim 9 wherein the goodness measure is annealed as iterations progress.

11. The method as claimed in claim 10 wherein tables relating players to game themes are produced for one or more type of transaction information.

12. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein tables relating players to game themes are produced for a plurality of types of transaction information.

13. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein the fields are selected from coin in; coin out, game plays and jackpot.

14. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein in each iteration consideration is given to exchanging table values and a measure of goodness of the tables with the exchanged values is utilizes to assess whether a change is kept or discarded.

15. The method as claimed in claim 13 wherein in each iteration consideration is given to exchanging table values and a measure of goodness of the tables with the exchanged values is utilizes to assess whether a change is kept or discarded.

16. The method as claimed in claim 14 wherein for each non-zero table value exchanges with all other table locations are considered.

17. The method as claimed in claim 14 wherein for each non-zero value exchanges with all other table locations not in the same row or column are considered.

18. The method as claimed in claim 16 wherein the largest values are considered first.

19. The method as claimed in claim 17 wherein the largest values are considered first.

20. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein the table cells are initially populated according to rules.

21. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein the table cells are initially populated in a pseudo random order.

22. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein the table cells are initially populated in order along a row or column.

23. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein the table cells are initially populated by allocating table values from the largest to the smallest.

24. The method as claimed claim 11 wherein the tables include total values for each row and column derived from the transaction information.

25. The method as claimed in claim 24 wherein the tables include error values for each row and column being the difference between the row or column total and the sum of the row or column values.

26. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein a meta-algorithm controls one or more sub algorithm.

27. The method as claimed in claim 20 wherein a meta-algorithm controls one or more sub algorithm.

28. The method as claimed in claim 27 wherein the meta-algorithm resets the initial table values one or more times during processing.

29. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein processing terminates after a prescribed number of iterations.

30. The method as claimed in claim 3 wherein processing terminates after a prescribed number of iterations.

31. The method as claimed in claim 20 wherein processing terminates after a prescribed number of iterations.

32. The method as claimed in claim 27 wherein processing terminates after a prescribed number of iterations.

33. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein processing terminates when the goodness measure is within an acceptable range.

34. The method as claimed in claim 3 wherein processing terminates when the goodness measure is within an acceptable range.

35. The method as claimed in claim 20 wherein processing terminates when the goodness measure is within an acceptable range.

36. The method as claimed in claim 27 wherein processing terminates when the goodness measure is within an acceptable range.

37. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein prior to performing any iterations table values having a high confidence level are frozen.

38. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein table values are frozen when there is a unique relationship between table values.

39. The method as claimed in claim 20 wherein table values are frozen when there is a unique relationship between table values.

40. The method as claimed in claim 37 wherein table values are frozen when there is a unique relationship between table values.

41. A gaming intelligence system comprising:

a. a plurality of gaming machines, each machine including:

i. a first monitoring unit that stores first transaction information relating to players, the first transaction information consisting of machine id, player id, coin in and coin out on a plurality of players; and

ii. a second independent monitoring unit that stores second transaction information relating to machine game themes, the second transaction information consisting of theme played, coin in and coin out, the second monitoring unit being independent of the first monitoring unit and the second monitoring unit storing no player ID information; and

b. an evaluation system on an electronic computing device that receives the first transaction information and the second independent transaction information from the first and second monitoring units and determines correlations between player IDs and game theme IDs by correlating the first transaction information and the second independent transaction information to produce correlated player and game theme transaction information for each of the plurality of machines, wherein the correlated player and game theme transaction information includes machine id, player id, theme played, coin in and coin out and wherein the correlated player and game theme information is used by the gaming intelligence system in optimizing gaming operations by altering the machine layout.