Patent ID: 8613657

Claim:
A system for permitting identification and counting of gaming chips, comprising: (a) a set of gaming chips, each gaming chip of said set of gaming chips including at least one gaming chip inlay assembly containing at least one looped conductor in the form of a spiral inductor and an integrated circuit operatively connected to said looped conductor so that the resulting resonance frequency is higher than the RFID carrier frequency to compensate for the effect of stacking chips to up to 20 high, said integrated circuit also storing identification data; and (b) a gaming table provided with a primary looped conductor for each of at least two gaming read zones on said gaming table and an electronic module operatively associated with each looped conductor, said electronic module being arranged to provide a current of predetermined amplitude and frequency to each of the primary looped conductors in order to induce a magnetic field and receive and interpret a signal received, wherein the primary loop conductor is configured to allow reading the data stored in stacked gaming chips or single chips of the set of gaming chips disposed within a desired read zone; (c) whereby said system is operable such that, when one of said gaming chips is in the vicinity of one of said primary looped conductors, near field magnetic coupling occurs between the looped conductor of said gaming chip and said primary looped conductor, whereby information is transmitted from said gaming chip to said electronic module in the form of a signal, wherein the system is characterized in that it further comprises an active circuit arrangement including an active field control circuit connected to magnetic field control couplers positioned near to each primary looped conductor, wherein the active circuit arrangement is operable to use active circuit methods for preventing the receiving of signals by each primary looped conductor from beyond a desired read zone.