A year later, Scientific Games bought Bally. The company was then sold to Bally Technologies for $1.3 billion. It also owned proprietary rights for several table games and created a variety of electronic table systems and electronic gaming machines. It also made Forbesâ list of the 200 Best Small Companies for five straight years. īy 2013, SHFL was producing a range of utility products including the wildly popular Deck Mate shuffler and automatic chip sorters. By 2012, the company had changed its name to SHFL in order to reflect its diverse range of products which now included more casino table games.ĭuring its heyday, Shuffle Master owned a virtual monopoly of the automatic card shuffler business. In 2004, they once again turned their attention to table games by acquiring BET Technology which had developed popular casino table games such as Casino War and Pai Gow Poker. Unfortunately, Shuffle Master didnât find success with slot machines. The company partnered with larger companies including IGT and Bally Technologies and specialized in branded slot games like Press Your Luck, Letâs Make a Deal, and The Honeymooners. His automatic shuffling machine had caught on by 1995, but the new table game was generating more revenue.īy the late 1990s, Shuffle Master has expanded their horizons by creating casino slot machines. The game was a hit and he successfully increased demand for his single-deck machine. He wanted to create a demand for his machine so he once again thought outside of the box and created a new single-deck casino game called Let It Ride. The only problem was that his shuffler was designed for single decks while casinos had started using multiple decks. He founded Shuffle Master in 1983 and the automatic shuffler finally hit the market in 1992.

Naturally, casinos donât really like having card counters playing at their tables.īreeding came up with a solution to the problem and took out a $30,000 loan to develop a device that took away the advantage gained from card counting. Counting cards is far from easy, but those who have mastered the craft can essentially reverse the casino edge and win more money more often. When they think the next card or cards will be advantageous, they up their bets. For those unfamiliar with the concept, card counting is a strategy that gives blackjack players the ability to anticipate what cards are left in the deck. In the early 1980s, truck driver John Breeding was thinking about a newspaper article regarding card counting in blackjack. Truck drivers have a lot of time to think when they are on the road.

Bally sands 1980's slot machine