Live Poker Getting a Boost?

Live poker continues to aspire to be more like online poker with the invention of RFID poker chips. (Image Courtesy Abbiati)

The International Gaming Expo coming up in London this January, will undoubtedly have plenty of interesting gadgets and poker technology advancements, but the one that caught our eye was Gaming Partners International’s (GPI) RFID poker chips.

If you’ve grown accustomed to the pace of online poker and find it hard to get into your groove with the slow pace of live poker, the RFID poker chips might have a shot at getting you back in the brick and mortar casinos.

These poker chips allow instant and accurate tracking of various actions at the poker tables. The system can be fitted to any table and can do things like calculate pot sizes in real-time as a hand is played.

Aria, a casino that recently opened up in the ever-so-slow-to-be-completed City Center complex in Las Vegas, recently saw a delivery of its casino and poker chips from GPI, most of which had RFID inserts.

According to GPI, RFIDPoker can boost the speed of a live poker game by up to 30%. While this is great to hear, and I hope to see this in casinos everywhere, until they find a way to let you multi-table and insult people with anonymity, I’ll still be primarily an online poker player.