Device Lets People Who Can't Use Hands Play Poker

Chris Farrell and Dave Hofferber are two poker-playing plumbers from Nebraska. They play in the local bar league in Lexington, and also in an occasional home game, and it's through these games they met Matt Johnson, a quadriplegic poker player who inspired them to come up with a way to allow him to view his cards without relying on other players.

It's been two years since inspiration struck the men and now they have MattVision, a box of mirrors that allows people with limited or no use of their hands to play card games without the help of others, except a dealer who slides the cards into the front of the device.

Before MattVision, other players in the game would have to show him his holecards while the rest of the table tried not to peek. Ferrell said oftentimes one or both of Johnson's cards would be exposed, tainting the game and, for Johnson, taking the pleasure out of poker. Farrell said he even started to notice Johnson would sometimes stop asking people to help him when he felt he was asking too much, and this didn't sit too well with the office manager of Hofferber's plumbing store.

"It was really frustrating for us and I can't imagine what it was like for him. You got to look at your cards several times, it's just part of the game," Farrell says. "I said, 'Why don't we just build a box with a mirror in it?'"

So he and Hofferber did, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds.

MattVision contains two mirrors that perfectly reflect the holecards to the eyes of the player in need. It's not much bigger than a children's jewelry box, but the design took many extra hours in the back of the plumbing shop to perfect.

"It's not something that we did overnight. There's a lot of time and a lot of gin involved in this," Farrell says with a laugh.

The first one was made of sheet metal - it's what was available in the shop - and Farrell says was big enough to nearly fit a soccer ball inside. The two had to spend a lot of time tinkering and adjusting the mirrors inside so that only the player who needed the device would be able to see the cards, and to also get it small enough to confortably sit on a poker table. Farrell says they nailed it.

"There's just no way for anyone else to see his cards," he says. "It just opens up a whole new door for him and anyone who can't use their hands."

With that in mind, the two business partners visited local nursing homes to see if residents would be interested in using their device, and they found that people loved it. If only they played hold'em.

The older card players didn't play poker much, but they did play a lot of gin and other games. Since they played games that required multiple cards to be dealt, the two invented a MattVision reader to accommodate up to 13 cards, with numbered slots so that the player could tell whoever which cards to discard simply by saying the number.

Farrell's enthusiasm for their invention (and he credits Johnson for being and integral part of the team) is contagious and sweet. Their device gives people independence while playing, and there seems to be not enough of these types of devices in the world in general.

The two have a patent pending on the MattVision, and they plan on marketing and selling it to anyone who needs one. But right now, each MattVision is made by the two men by hand. They hope to eventually get enough capital to buy a mold-injection machine that will make mass-producing the readers so much easier, but that's down the road, and really, it's not that important to the two inventors.

"If we got nothing out of, we just improved his life so much because it gave him a sense of freedom," Farrell says. "It really is an incredible thing."

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