This article was published in Unica magazine, on July 2010. Section: Women on top.  Translation: Anca Berlo

The Ace up your sleeve

Anca Berlo and Diana Ciorba organise just for fun gaming sessions, where beginners are entertained by “betting” at Poker, Roulette or Blackjack.

When you say poker, you instantly think about private gaming rooms, where, around a round table and a under a thick cloud of cigarete smoke, gambling aficionados spend hours. Anca Berlo and Diana Ciorba, to petites, not even 30 years old, have thought to present to the public another facet of poker, where nobody leaves the table broke. Here, games are not played for money, and everybody leaves the event with memories of an exotic gaming experience.

“Corporate” entertainment

The business that Diana and Anca have set in motion a year ago is destined mostly to companies wishing to offer employees a different team building, or who want to organise a party that would include also a few exciting gaming sessions. “Our target aren’t casino players, but people who haven’t gambled at all, who do not know what Roulette or Blackjack are. These people want something different, they do not dare to enter a casino, nor are they interested in doing so. We mostly cover corporate parties and team buildings. We do not wish to be a competition for real live casinos, we are event managers and party organisers”, says Anca Berlo who has worked as a croupier early in her casino career.

Business started as a joke

After visiting half of the world while working in casinos, from Morocco to the Caribbean, from coast to coast in the USA, Canada and Europe, Anca started to miss home and returned to Romania. Here, after a meeting with her friend, Diana, who owns a marketing outsourcing company, the idea of building a business around “casino” type of games bloomed in their minds. “I returned to Romania at the end of 2008 and the idea to make a fun casino for parties came up as a joke. So there we were, together with Diana, looking at some poke table layouts and some chips and did not know what to do with them. And then, Diana said, let’s throw some parties!”. At that time, Diana was collaborating with a few team building companies via her own business she had started in 2007. “After presenting our idea to them, they were very receptive to collaborate and that’s how we started our casino parties”. The initial investment in the business was around 13.000 euro and during less than a year from starting out they had made up for half of it.

Around and about with the gaming table

How exactly does their business, generically called “Your Fun Casino” (www.yourfuncasino.ro) work? The main ingredient are the mobile fun casino tables, that are foldable and can be carried around easily. The real gambling atmosphere can be recreated mostly everywhere, in a socialising space, for a figure that starts with a few hundred euros and can lead to a few thousands. That is why, this type of entertainment is mostly suitable for large groups, in places that can allow for the creation of a special atmosphere. They collaborate with professional croupiers and events are organised in venues chosen by the clients, generally hotel and event halls with a “spark” – places where corporate events take place. “We have designed the tables so that even the two of us can carry them. We just gave the coordinates – how wide and long they should be. They are very practical, easy to transport and even the two of us can set them up. This was the purpose, actually, not to need help, because we both weigh 40-45 kilograms and cannot handle heavy equipment. The croupiers we collaborate with come from Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest” explains Diana Ciorba, the owner of a master degree in economy. A funny happening that seems to repeat itself at every “fun casino” party is that players want to take the place of the croupiers, to handle the chips and the bets. “They want to be croupiers. Especially in team buildings, this thing happens. The croupier’s job seems easy from the distance, but, when you realise how many fast calculations you need to perform…when they go on the other side of the table they say …’But it’s difficult!’ …You can only imagine that some of them have two left hands…”, laughs Anca.

None of them plays for real money

Although their work represents organising “poker parties”, neither Anca, nor Diana frequent casinos as customers, nor do they gamble their money at the “green tables”. Anca was never tempted to cross the side of the table and become a gambler and Diana also does not spend her economies for a spin at the roulette. “We don’t gamble” declaims Anca, both for herself and Diana, and continues: ”I have never had a passion for gambling. I visited casinos just out of professional curiosity.” […] “We have clients who tell us they they are curious about the casino games but do not wish to lose their money so they choose our concept, ‘Your Fun Casino’ ” tells Anca. Now, the two business ladies are not worried about competition, since it withdrew from the market… “We have received excellent feedback for the way we imagine the event and party concepts, in comparison to our ex competitors” pride themselves the two entrepreneurial ladies from Ardeal.