Some implementations of the invention provide methods and devices for managing gaming establishments and for provisioning and configuring gaming machines. Some such implementations allow a user to configure one or more gaming machines via an easy-to-use GUI displayed on a wired or a wireless device, such as a laptop, a PDA, a work station or other host device. Gaming machine parameters that can be changed according to some implementations of the invention include game denominations, games to enable or disable, game payback percentage, deal speed, volume level and enabling or disabling a tournament. Some preferred implementations of the invention provide an event scheduler that allows a user either to cause events to occur immediately or schedule certain events to occur at a future time. Some implementations of the invention allow a user to generate activity reports highlighting configuration changes, user logins, game set additions, and/or game downloading. Novel methods and devices for authentication are also provided herein. Some implementations of the invention allow a user to manage easily game downloads to a local server and/or to each gaming machine.