Australian technology and poker aficionado Andrew Milner has designed an RFID-enabled poker table that could bring the excitement of televised poker to weekly home games.
Milner spent three months building the poker table, which is outfitted with wireless RFID chips at the bottom of the table and on decks of cards. In addition, quality high-definition cameras follow every move made by each player in a game. Milner also designed software to enable a video stream of a Texas Hold’em game that can broadcast either to a television in his house or over the internet.
“Technology and poker are two of my passions, so the video poker table seemed like the perfect project,” Milner said in an interview. “I built it in my spare time over about three months. Not including my time, it cost about $7,000 to build. I am currently investigating the possibility of building a less expensive production version for sale.”
Today’s television programs show each player’s cards through a camera installed within the table. Viewers watch through a player’s perspective and are given odds by a separate program that are generated once a card is drawn.
Milner’s table, however, allows viewers to track where each card is on the table. This is made possible using the RFID chips placed on each of the cards. The chips are thin and hidden, making the cards just as flexible and manageable as regular cards. While knowing which card is coming might take away some of the suspense for viewers, it could build anticipation by allowing those watching to know the result before the player does.
The technology used by Miler is quite amazing. “The system uses four color CCD cameras, each connected to a USB capture device that encodes the video into an H.264 stream,” he explained. “The software on the PC (which I coded myself) takes these streams and mixes them in real-time based on the data generated by the RFID reader under the table. The output is streamed live in WMV format.” The result is a professional quality video stream that allows him to record each decision at the table in real time.
Milner, the chairman of an Australian IT company, is working on another video poker table that will be a completely different concept from the original. He is also investigating the possibility of building a less expensive production version of the first table for sale. Either of these slick new designs could change the way poker is broadcasted in the future.
