Patent ID: 6889979

Claim:
A method for performing an inventory of cards in an electronically controlled card shuffler, with cards of an unshuffled stack being output to an output stage in a random sequence, the method comprising: forwarding cards from the unshuffled stack into individual compartments of the card shuffler; detecting the passage of each card forwarded to the compartments; counting the number of cards forwarded to the compartments to determine the number of cards within each of the compartments; ejecting cards from the compartments into the output stage; and subtracting the number of cards ejected from the compartments from the number of cards forwarded to the compartments to identify the total number of cards still in the compartments, wherein subtracting the number of cards ejected from the compartments comprises subtracting the number of cards ejected from a compartment as a single group from the number of cards forwarded to the compartments, wherein detecting the number of cards ejected from the compartments comprises detecting actuation of an ejecting device that ejects all cards from a compartment as a group.