METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SHUFFLING AND HANDLING CARDS

A card shuffler that moves cards one-at-a-time from the bottom of a group that may be a deck in a deck-crib, to randomly designated single-card receptacles in a receiving or dealing rack, and methods for shuffling and for dealing cards. Either the deck-crib or the receiving rack is moved by a motor to align a single-card receptacle, randomly selected from among remaining empty single-card receptacles, with an outfeed slot of the deck-crib to receive each card to be moved from the deck-crib. A single card is moved from the deck-crib by a card mover mechanism that may include an auxiliary card pusher to ensure that the card is placed fully into the selected single-card receptacle. A controller can cause the dealing rack to move so as to allow a selected number of cards to be removed by the dealer for dealing as a player hand or a dealer hand. A card presentation pusher may make a group of the cards in the dealing rack available to be grasped by the dealer for removal. A card reader may be included, and positions in the receiving or dealing rack of cards identified by the card reader can be stored in memory in the controller.