I'm glad you brought this up, I play very high stakes games when they are available & I have one of the best win rates around. I don't even play a lot of tournaments, mainly cash , but I"m ranked in the top 50 in all major tournament rankings for what its worth. I also have over 90% win rate in handshuffled games over the last 5 years when i put in 8 hours or more. I also play in the biggest games durnign tournament side action, 25 50 or 50 100NL, 50 100 or 100 200 PLO when it goes, The games are smaller where I live now but when I travel I will play as big as the games get.

I have read the entire Patent and see zero basis for any of the above claims. Care to show some quotes from the Patent that supports your statements?

Yeah, OP is just like those people who used to tell us that online poker was rigged. Of course we shouted those people down, because no online poker site would ever risk all that legitimate business just to try to cheat its customers for a little while before being found out.

Actually I agree with you -- PMing to avoid hijacking.

Yes can you please post the sections/pages where it discusses its ability to recognize cards and "sort" the cards into any particular order.

LOL, I already have, but theres at least 5 different spots in the patent where it says this, Find it yourself, If you can't then you haven't read it

OP is owning us all so bad.

This is the key that Conspiracy Theorists seem to forget - the human element. They want to give perfect execution powers to the alleged conspirators. They want to believe that they can execute their plans without flaw nor detection.

If Shuffflemaster and the Casinos are this good at executing a stacked deck to coordinate with and influence player behavior, why do it with a little shuffler? Couldn't they do the same thing more easily with special cards? The machines can't even shuffle 100 hands in a row without an error - you expect them to be able to stack a deck perfectly with a little "cut mark" for the dealer? Wouldn't the dealers, poker room management, Shufflemaster, programmers, table builders, and any number of other people be aware of, or close enough to detect this and therefore need to be silenced? Have you ever actually met these people? They are not capable of executing such elaborate schemes.

Finally - if they are so interested in keeping this a secret, why would they put the EVIDENCE OF A SMOKING GUN in the actual PATENT?!?!?!?!? What are they going to do, sue someone in public for infringement of their ability to illegally rig a REGULATED Casino Poker Game?

Again.

I have read the Patent.

You're lying.

FWIW I once asked a Shufflemaster manager if multiple shuffle machines could be set up to shuffle the cards the same for a duplicate poker live tourney and the answer was yes.

Human element, your right, The human element of regulation has shown to be pretty corrupt when allowed to be. As far as keeping it secret, yea it usually comes out in the form of an Enron, Absolute poker, Ultimate bet .

I'm lying about the patent?? LOL Even on the very last page it states on line 47 "a method of arranging a group of cards into a DESIRED order in a computer controlled automatic card shuffler, Line 49 The method of claim wherein the final order is PREDETERMINED

Enron?

Do you even know what happened with Enron?

Apparently not, or you wouldn't bother to mention it here.

...and we know about AP & UB because of the Human Element.

I am a patent attorney. Let me tell you a secret.

Just because a feature is described in the patent, does not mean that that particular feature is actually utilized in the commercial product.

The patent attorney's job is to describe the invention as broadly as possible, so that all foreseeable features/add-ons/uses/etc are adequately described in the patent document.

The actual product is only one specific embodiment of the invention described in the patent.

Either the inventor, or the patent attorney while drafting the patent, probably had a thought like, "Hey, you know what? We could theoretically also use these automated shuffle systems to arrange the deck in a specific order." So they wrote about it.

That does NOT mean that the actual sold product can do it. It just means they thought of it so they threw it into the patent.

I think its funny that everyone thinks that this is so far fetched, like casinos wouldn't take every small edge they can get, cause um ....... THATS ALL THEY ****IN DO. I wouldn't put it past any business to do everything in their power to control the game. You're ignorant if you think this could never happen.

God it would be so amazingly rigged in my favor to have only "non-action" hands dealt. I would get to rob all the paranoid nits hand after hand and never have to worry about you getting a hand big enough to put in a reraise.

EXACTLY!!!

Here is the section in full

So you can see they are patenting the capability in Claim #49.

But if you read the entire Patent, there is no capability built into the machine.

This is a good point, and in all seriousness I can't imagine what benefits to having card-recognition technology would outweigh the downside of insider cheating. Obviously, this risk is much bigger in games like blackjack, but for reals, wtf can the shufflemasters read the cards if not to allow for cheating?

I'm guessing they're going to say that it's cheating prevention, i.e. it "counts down" the deck every hand, instead of the dealer doing it once per down. For me, that would not be a big enough upside to justify the risk to the players.

So, I agree with the OP in principle (auto-shufflers should not be able to read the cards) even though his thoughts about "non-action" deals are ******ed.

Non action deals would be the purpose of the machine. Casinos hate NL & PL games, players go broke. It prolongs a bad players life & allows player retention. Ameranth wireless develops a software interface for the deckmate. Why?? Thats the question, They call it poker management software.

Aug. 10, 2005 -- Shuffle Master, Inc. (NASDAQ National Market: SHFL) announced today that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Ameranth Wireless, Inc. of San Diego, CA to promote and distribute Ameranth's poker-room management products throughout the world. Under the terms of the agreement, Ameranth will develop a software interface between Shuffle Master's Deck Mate(R) poker shuffler and Ameranth's poker-room products to provide poker-room operators breakthrough functionality and a more robust total system solution.

"The Ameranth poker-room management products are an excellent complement to our Deck Mate poker shuffler," stated Paul C. Meyer, Shuffle Master President and Chief Operating Officer. "By combining the exceptional functionality of the Deck Mate with Ameranth's alert and monitoring capabilities, we will provide our customers with an unprecedented level of poker table activity tracking and reporting. This agreement demonstrates our commitment to providing the gaming industry with the highest level of table game-related technology."

but you cannot beat online poker because the deck is rigged?

seriously... how many hands of poker have you played in your life? How many hours this year? How many hours last year? I doubt you have played enough hands to know what your win rate is yet - see Gambling Theory & Other Topics for more details.

Everyday, I make my income solely from poker & have for the last 7-8 years. I had the chip lead in 7 different tournaments at the WSOP this year over 50% of the way through including one where I made a final table with 2317 entries & I don't even play tournies that much, I killed the 50 100 PLO game in the high stakes area as well, Not trying to brag because this isnt the point of this forum, but people that know me can tell you that I'm the winniest player in pretty much any game I play

In 2004 I was #1 in full tilt frequent points & was killing the games & winning everyday & then I couldn't win another hand & its been that way ever since unless I open a new account

I say that only to show you that I'm serious about this thread, I'm not just someone ranting & raving. I've played millions of hands & I'm a top NL & PLO player so I have a lot of experience in how games are supposed to play out & the way cards run, they are not the same in shufflemaster games, they deal to one or two players all night, the same cards run to the same seat more often in patterns.

Exactly how would the casino make more money on this? Non-action hands mean less rake. More action might mean more rake, but a bigger chance that you break tables.

How exactly does the casino profit from "rigging" poker shufflers?

I don't trust shufflemaster, either, but I think that it would be really hard for someone to hack it. I don't think that the casino has any incentive to rig it.

So how would someone hack it? If it is communicating wirelessly, it will have a signal, but it will likely be encoded. More likely that it will be hard wired, which will not have any means to connect into the system. I suppose that the wire could be tapped, but that will require an inside job.

Assuming that it is wireless, you are going to need a computer to decode and hack it. Working on a computer is not going to be permitted at the table. There is no way that I see to exploit the weakness, if it actually has the security flaw.

Any system that is rigging the shuffle will also track the results. Therefore, it will detect if someone is benefitting at greater than X std deviations, which is the way UB/AP fraud was detected.

If the deck is cut once it comes out of the shuffler (by a player) which is usually the case then.....

This is one of the stupidest conspiracy theories I've ever heard.

Its pretty simple, casinos use time drop these days & even if they dont, rake is maximize in almost everyhand is larger stakes games. The pot size is irrelevant to rake. The biggest threat to pokerrooms & onlinepoker in particular is top notch players breaking the weaker players in large games. Casinos would rather have small limit games, they make more money & keep the player pool playing