Inspiration
Casino operators drown in meter data but still rank cabinets by raw house win. Dashboard Royale asked for a priced July plan, not another chart wall. We wanted a desk that separates cold rooms from bad games, and leaves money unspent when replacement is the wrong move.
What it does
The Gilded Ace is an interactive Streamlit desk for a fictional Las Vegas floor. It fair-tests every cabinet, maps cold spots on the surveyed floor, and funds at most three catalog actions. For Jan–Jun 2025, 0 of the bottom 10 are replaceable: 7 location, 2 short tenure, 1 inspect. All 46 location cases sit in Back Forty. July spend is $17,700—three Jackpot Summit moves, Back Forty signs, four inspections—leaving $82,300 unspent. M-1152 already proved the move: ~$119/hour in Back Forty, ~$245 at Main Entrance.
How we built it
DuckDB owns every dollar from parquet. Pandas builds the scorecard and July plan. A weekday-mean coin-in forecast freezes on April 30 and scores May–June against a flat mean. Streamlit and Plotly make the desk clickable—periods, zones, banks, floor paths. Optional Gemini narrates a facts JSON only; it never queries tables.
Challenges we ran into
Keeping money logic untouched while rebuilding the UI. Making a 300-cabinet floor readable—Decision mode shows rooms, cold/inspect dots, and labeled July arrows instead of every cabinet. Streamlit widget state fighting chart clicks. Gemini client closing mid-request until we pinned the session. Model IDs changing under us (2.5-flash retired for new keys).
Accomplishments that we're proud of
A full property call with evidence: 0/10 replacements, Back Forty as the cold room, three priced actions, and a holdout forecast that beats baseline (~$69k vs ~$218k MAE). A floor map judges can read. A call sheet that stays honest when Gemini is off.
What we learned
Lowest house win is a terrible replacement signal. Empty warm slots, not budget, cap real moves. Simple weekday seasonality can beat a fancy story with no leakage. Affirmative language and “inspect, don’t accuse” make the product safer for operators.
What's next for The Gilded Ace
Ship the public Streamlit Cloud URL, optional GoDaddy domain, harden Gemini model config, and add a Claims appendix browser for judges. If credits allow, a small always-on host for demo week.
