Poker Table of the Future?
Here's your new dealer, a computer!
If you put a poker room or poker table from the 1800s side-by-side with most of any poker room you might play at today, you'd find very few differences, at least technologically. "Name me another place where technology has not improved what we're doing," says Lou White of PokerTek, Inc., a company that's out to change that very condition in a radical way. PokerTek has developed a poker table called PokerPro that is fully automatic, no dealer, no physical cards, no physical chips. All the action takes place on computer screens. Each player has his own screen where he can punch in his bets, calls, raises and folds, and there is also a large screen in the middle of the table. A player can view his cards by touching a corner of his screen.
"PokerPro is, at the end of the day, the ultimate poker dealer," says White. "It deals 50 percent faster than any human dealer on the planet, it never makes a mistake, and more importantly it never requires a tip."
Using the PokerPro table creates a win/win situation for both the casino and the player, he explains. How so? Well, a good player can win more hands because he'll play more hands in a given period of time, due to the table's dealing speed which means more money for the player. Also, he won't even have to tip the dealer a percentage of his winnings, he can keep whatever he wins.
"A semi-professional playing 30 to 40 hours a week at the 5-10 or 10-20 level probably tips out $5,000-$10,000 a year," estimates White. "That's huge amount." With the PokerPro table, not only do you get a potential profit increase from playing more hands, but you get to keep all you earn. "The income goes up and the expenses go down. It's an economic windfall for the good poker player," says White.
Another advantage is that the table will permit rabbit-hunting. Most casinos do not permit players to look at what cards they would have received had they not folded, because permitting this slows down the game. But with the PokerPro, you're able to peek. "We're adding a feature that allows you to rabbit-hunt," says White. "If, before the river, you decide to fold and want to see what the card was, you can hit a button and find out. It can't get any better than that.