Method and apparatus for handling cards

Abstract

A card shuffler that moves cards one at a time from the bottom of a group that may be a deck in a deck-crib, to randomly designated single-card receptacles in a receiving or dealing rack, and methods for shuffling and for dealing cards. Either the deck-crib or the receiving rack is moved by a motor to align a single-card receptacle, randomly selected from among remaining empty single-card receptacles, with an outfeed slot of the deck-crib to receive each card to be moved from the deck-crib. A single card is moved from the deck-crib by a card mover mechanism that may include an auxiliary card pusher to ensure that the card is placed fully into the selected single-card receptacle. A controller can cause the dealing rack to move so as to allow a selected number of cards to be removed by the dealer for dealing as a player hand or a dealer hand. A card presentation pusher may make a group of the cards in the dealing rack available to be grasped by the dealer for removal. A card reader may be included, and positions in the receiving or dealing rack of cards identified by the card reader can be stored in memory in the controller.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.