Inside Asian Gaming

19 of Worldwide Marketing Kirsten Clark explained “it’s a single-deck speciality shuffler. So it’s used primarily on games such as three-card poker or Caribbean stud, because it has the ability to authenticate the cards after they’re dealt. It used card recognition technology as a standard feature, so once a round is completed, if there is a jackpot payout, the casino can actually pull up the cards that were dealt to each particular player position. It’s all recorded. It optically reads the cards and stores it in memory within the shuffler. “So say for example you’re playing a game like three-card poker. Each player gets three cards. If say player position number 5 wins the highest payout with a straight flush, the casino can actually go into the shuffler once the round has been completed and verify what cards were dealt to that player, so there is no card switching, and there is no player-dealer collusion to swap out cards so you get those higher jackpot payouts.” Shuffle Master has just started rolling out the i-Deal™, and Ms Clark says the first real push will be in Asia. She concedes the i-Deal™ will be “marginally more expensive” because of all the new technology, but adds “there are a variety of other features that we believe offset the costs. “It’s significantly faster than prior models, so if you only have one or two players at a table, it’s virtually impossible still to outplay the shuffler. On older models it is—you can actually play faster than the shuffler can shuffle the cards. The first shufflers shuffled a single deck in about 32-34 seconds. This [i-Deal™] is about half that. It’s incredibly fast. “It also features remote diagnostics, so if it’s networked in, and Rapid Baccarat™