Abstract

An automatic card shuffler comprising a housing with at least two wells to receive two reserve stacks of playing cards to be intermixed and presented to a dealer one at a time. First extractor is provided to select, remove and intermix in a random sequence the bottommost card from each stack and to deliver the intermixed cards to a storage compartment or reservoir. A second extractor is provided to sequentially remove the bottommost card from the storage compartment or reservoir and to deliver it to a shoe having a dispensing compartment from which the dealer may take the card for presentation to the players. A sensor is used for determining the approximate number of cards in at least one of the wells and for determining the presence or absence of a card from the dispensing compartment. An electronic controller comprising a clock oscillator driving a binary counter and decoder is provided for randomly actuating the first extractor to randomly select and remove cards from the wells and thereby randomly intermix the cards as they are delivered to the storage compartment or reservoir.