Roy Student, Who Went From Apollo 11 to the Casino Floor, Dies at 83

Roy Student, an engineer who worked on the Lunar Module that carried astronauts to the Moon before spending five decades building the technology that runs casino floors, died September 5 after a long illness. He was 83.

From Bronx Athletics to the Apollo Program

Born Sanford Roy Student in the Bronx, he was a standout baseball player at Bayside High School and was scouted by the New York Yankees, the team he had grown up supporting. He turned down their offer of a place in the AAA organisation because he wanted to go to college, according to the obituary published by his family.

An athletics scholarship took him to the New York Institute of Technology, where he set a sprint record that stood for years and was later inducted into the university’s athletic hall of fame. He returned after graduating to coach the track team for three seasons.

With an engineering degree, he joined Grumman Aircraft on Long Island — the contractor NASA hired to build the Apollo lunar modules at its Bethpage plant. His family’s obituary says he was one of the project managers on the construction of the Lunar Module for Apollo 11. He met his wife, Judy, in 1964 and married her the following year; they were together more than 60 years.

Revolutionizing Casino Floor Technology and Player Tracking

A move to General Instrument Corporation brought him to Las Vegas. When MGM acquired a casino there and wanted a system to automate accounting on the floor — tracking players using markers and bankrolls at the table games — Student’s company won the contract. He later served on the founding executive board of the original MGM resort.

He went on to help form Gaming Systems International, which developed player-rating systems that his family’s obituary describes as an important precursor to the player tracking and rewards programmes now standard across the casino industry. Roger Gros, editor-at-large of Global Gaming Business magazine, where Student sat on the editorial advisory board, goes further, crediting GSI with developing the player rating systems prevalent in gaming today.

Student sold GSI in 2001 and became president of Cyberview Technology, an early developer of server-based gaming, which linked slot games to a central server and anticipated the networked casino systems that followed. Cyberview was later acquired by International Game Technology.

Global Influence and Industry Legacy

His next venture, Applied Management Strategies, advised gaming companies around the world. In that period he argued that loyalty programmes should count what customers spent on dining, entertainment and lodging, not just what they gambled — an idea now fundamental to the major casino rewards schemes. He served on the Dean’s Global Advisory Board at UNLV’s College of Hospitality and on the advisory board of The Mob Museum, and latterly consulted for Clarion Gaming, booking speakers for the conference programme at the ICE trade show.

His work took him to nearly 100 countries and every continent except Antarctica. He was, his family wrote, a natural storyteller who never ran short of material.

He is survived by his wife, Judy; his sons Darren and Glenn and their wives, Michal and Sophia; his grandchildren Tali, Ben, Kylee and Kim; and six great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his parents, Pauline and Morton Student, and his brother, Larry Student.

A service is scheduled for Wednesday, September 9, from 9 to 10 a.m. at King David Memorial Chapel & Cemetery, 2697 East Eldorado Lane, Las Vegas.

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