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In 2025, a dealing table

In 1932, a dealing table was patented by Laurens Hammond.[10] This was one of the first machines to use electricity to power the necessary shuffling and dealing mechanism. His patent description provides interesting insights regarding the problems related to previous machines: if the cards were worn or bent, the shuffling could fail. He also criticized the randomness of previous shuffling methods and pointed out the risk of predicting the final sequence. The patent also contains mathematical explanations regarding the inner state of his machine. A motor drove a rotating frame that would distribute 13 cards to each holdem player. The machine was going through 53 cycles to distribute the 52 cards. During each cycle, a selector plate with 52 notches rotated by one step. There were four possible depths for the notches and a lug touching the notches would determine which holdem player would receive the card. Each card was taken from the top of deck and sent to the corresponding player's receptacle using a conveyor track. The first cycle was used to rotate the plate and ensured that the distribution would start with a new sequence. One property of the machine is that the same holdem player could be served during two or three consecutive cycles. To increase randomness, the author proposes to use a set of different selector plates or to use another deck being shuffled while people are playing. The machine was fast enough to shuffle a whole deck in a few seconds. If only one plate was used, the same dealing sequence would appear after 52 deals (there were 52 possible starting points on the plate; the starting point was not randomly chosen as the plate always rotated by one step in the same direction during each cycle).

The problem of ensuring randomness

The problem of ensuring randomness using mechanical means was hard to resolve. In the early 1930s, Robert McKay proposed an ingenious machine containing a chamber with 52 balls of different diameters (for each holdem player, there were 13 balls with the same size).Like in a lottery machine, the balls would be shaken and randomly chosen by driving them one by one into a wheel with 52 slots. This wheel would then rotate, slot by slot, and a rod in contact with the ball would "detect" its diameter. A distribution mechanism could then use the diameter information and take the appropriate action to deal the card to the correct holdem player.