My million-dollar idea

I actually had an original poker-related idea last night. An invention. Or, rather, an improvement on an existing invention.

Shufflemaster should add a sterilizing function to its card shuffler. My first thought was a powerful ultraviolet light bathing the cards as they get sifted. It would turn off when the lid is open, of course, like the magnetron in a microwave oven. I suppose that gamma radiation would work, too, though perhaps the shielding required would be prohibitive.

But though these methods might sterilize the cards, which would be nice, given all the grime that they accumulate, it would really be better if there were a physical scrubbing/washing mechanism. Like a little dishwasher. Heck, the machines already sound like a dishwasher, if you're in a poker room quiet enough that you can hear the things working. This would probably take a little time, so they might have to go to three or four decks being cycled through, rather than just two. But every time, the dealer would lift out a freshly washed, sterilized deck, perfectly safe for handling (until the gross players put their greasy, filthy, unwashed, poo-smeared, nose-picking, licked fingers all over them again). No disease transmission between the players! I could even settle for regular shuffling most of the time, with the "wash" cycle only turned on, say, every half hour, when the dealers change and there's an extra delay before the next hand starts anyway.

Of course, the problem is that it's hard to imagine most casinos caring enough about clean cards to spend the extra bucks on my upgraded machine. Maybe the Wynn and Venetian. But a place like Jokers Wild, where the dealers lick their fingers before pitching the cards? No way.

We'd also have to do something with the chips, which get even nastier than the cards do.

But it's a start. And I'm giving away my idea free of charge to Shufflemaster or anybody else who cares to work on implementing it. It's my public service for the day.


(What does a baby elephant have to do with this? Nothing, really. But I did a Google image search for "scrubbing" to see what might come up, and I found this picture of people scrubbing a baby elephant. I'm a sucker for pictures of baby elephants, and, as you might imagine, the subject matter of this blog doesn't lend itself to such photos very often. I have to grab the opportunities when I can. I don't know when my next real vacation might be, but if I can make it to a place where I can scrub baby elephants, that's where I'm going!)