Andrew Milner, an Australian IT Manager, has designed a home-made poker table with RFID tracking capabilities, and cameras, which can track the location of every card in play, and in the deck, and can also be used to run streaming broadcasts of the game, similar to the broadcasts offered by big television networks.
The table cost around $7,000 to create, and has tiny RFID tags on each card. It took him about three months to build. The tags only work at fairly close range, so they should not be readable by anyone else at the table, but they can be used to identify cards that are in play, so if you wanted to stream your poker game over the internet, and let viewers have the ‘inside scoop’ on the hands of each player, for added excitement, then this would be the perfect way to do it.
It is unlikely that similar tables will be commercially available at an affordable price any time soon, but we could see the technology making an appearance in future World Series of Poker events. Currently small cameras attached to the table are used to allow viewers to see the hole cards of competitors, but RFID tags would be a much more elegant solution.
It is also possible that they could be used in casinos, as a way for managers to keep an eye on games, and to prevent cheating.
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