Provenance
Not a claim we make about ourselves. A filing, an assignment record and a broadcast — all public, all checkable.
The record
The automated playing-card identification system behind modern poker television was invented by Frank Lewis, Kelly Lewis and Lawrence Rogers, and filed with the United States Patent & Trademark Office on 15 June 2005, claiming priority to 15 June 2004 — a month before the technology reached air.
The filing describes the whole pipeline: RFID-tagged laminated playing cards, antennas and readers built into the gaming surface, and a graphics generator inserting the identified cards into a live television broadcast. It was filed internationally the same day under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, designating more than 180 states.
We host no copies. These are public, permanent, and independent of us.
US 2006/0001211 A1 — the US filing
WO 2005/123203 A2 — the international filing
rfid.poker — the full record, including the chain of title
The application was not carried through to grant, and we say so plainly. A filing and publication are documentary proof of invention and priority whether or not a patent issues — and the part people leave out is usually the part worth checking.
On air
RFID card identification reaches national television at the American Poker Championship, Turning Stone Resort & Casino — replacing the error-prone mirror and mini-camera hole-card rigs that came before it. The complete broadcast is still online — roughly two and a half hours across part one, part two and part three, uploaded by a viewer rather than by us: John D’Agostino, Phil Ivey, Randy Jensen, John Juanda, Robert Williamson and Paul Phillips at the final table.
The first real-time outs calculator for televised poker — showing viewers, live, exactly how many cards can still win a hand.
The system drives live on-air graphics and table lighting for the Poker Dome Challenge on FSN, which goes on to win an Emmy. A video published in May 2007, after the award, shows it running — with Frank Lewis on camera explaining the card — and has sat untouched on the public internet ever since.
Card tracking extended beyond Hold’em to rotating mixed games for the first time.
The same lineage of people, still building the RFID, game-integrity and broadcast-graphics stack for poker worldwide.
Why it matters to you
Two decades of building this means the failure modes are known ones. Which chip survives a shuffle machine. Why a deck that reads perfectly on a bench misses a card under stage lighting. How far a hole card can travel before it becomes a game-integrity problem. What a broadcast delay actually has to protect.
None of that is in a datasheet. It is the difference between cards that read, and cards that read on show day.
Tell us what you are trying to make and we will tell you honestly what it takes.
Talk to us