Card Dealing Machine

Abstract

A card dealing machine with an oscillating arm that includes a receiver or shoe that has four slots therein. The arm's oscillating motion is stopped once per rotation to align the appropriate slot with an exit slit where a card comes out. The location that the arm is stopped depends on a value read by an optical card reader, where the card value is associated with a pre-determined hand that corresponds to the appropriate slot. The oscillating motion is repeated until all 52 cards in the deck are dealt. Errors or warnings are issued if more or less than 52 cards are read or if duplicate cards are read.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention relates to a device and method for automatically dealing playing cards. More particularly, the invention relates to dealing cards in pre-determined combinations.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Card games involve a combination of luck and skill. The luck is largely dependent on what cards are dealt in each hand and the player's skill often determines the outcome based on how the hand is played. In tournament play, there are typically multiple tables initially where the winner or top placers among the table move on to further rounds as the tables consolidate.[0003]Duplicate bridge is a widely used variation of contract bridge in club and tournament play. Duplicate bridge uses identical combinations of cards among the different tables in order to remove the element of luck in random dealing from a shuffled deck.[0004]Outside tournament play, it may be desirable to play hands that masters or professionals were dealt in famous tournaments in ord...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008]It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a simple, compact and inexpensive card dealing machine that is suitable for both tournament, club and home bridge play.

[0009]A further object of the invention is to provide a machine that enables dealing of pre-determined hands either selected via an interface on the machine or via a network or a wireless connection.

[0023]In some embodiments a port on the card dealing machine is configured to receive a memory device having data indicative of one or more of the pre-determined hands stored thereon such that upon connection of the memory device to the port, the processor is programmed to deal at least one of the one or more of the pre-determined hands. In one aspect, the interface of the card dealing machine allows for selection of sets of pre-determined game hands from the data stored on the memory device.

Problems solved by technology

As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,534,562 uses binary code marked cards which are read by a reader and directed to different slots based on the card that was read, but the mechanisms used result in a rather large, cumbersome and expensive machine.

This can make it more difficult for players to use card counting or other techniques in games such as black jack to gain an advantage on over the “house”.

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