Site News  |   Monitor Keywords  |   Monitor Archive  |   Organizer  |   Account Info  |

Poker video game terminal

Poker video game terminal description/claims

The present invention relates to video game terminals and in particular, to a method of playing a card game on a video game terminal or on a series of networked terminals.

Video game terminals are commonly available in restaurants and bars for amusement purposes. Video game terminals typically have relatively simple straight forward games that can be played in two to four minutes. The terminals include a coin or bill payment capability.

Often these video game terminals have more than 100 games available to play and a large portion of these games will be card games. Some of these terminals allow for multi-player network games to be played by players at different terminals.

In the present invention, a particular approach for playing a card game is disclosed which allows for a game similar to the popular poker game Texas Hold'em. The particular approach of the game allows the game to be completed in a relatively short period of time while still maintaining a high degree of similarity with conventional poker games.

A method of playing a video game terminal poker game according to the present invention comprises one player using the video game terminal and three or more terminal generated and controlled players with each player having a starting point value used for play and scoring in the poker game. The poker game includes a series of elimination rounds where each elimination round comprises two or more hands and eliminating the player with the lowest score at the end of each elimination round. Each hand in an elimination round includes two down cards provided to each player and 5 common cards provided face up for use by all players in combination with their respective two down cards for forming the best poker hand and thereby determining a winner of a pool associated with the hand. Each hand in an elimination round includes one or more player wagering steps where players wager points from said starting points of said players with said wagered points accumulating in a win pool and a player withdrawing from the hand if a wager is not matched or exceeded. The game terminal for each hand initially provides two down cards for each player and 3 face up cards of said 5 common cards followed by one of said wagering steps. The game terminal subsequently displays a fourth common card followed by a further wagering step for remaining players and thereafter the terminals displays the fifth common card. After the fifth common card the winner of the hand is determined based on the player that forms the best poker hand using any of the 5 common cards and the player's two down cards and awarding the winning player the win pool that is added to the player's point value. At least two hands are played for each elimination round and eliminating the player with the lowest point value at the end of each elimination round is eliminated.

In a preferred aspect of the invention, the elimination rounds include initial elimination rounds and final elimination rounds and the number of hands forming a final elimination round is greater than the number of hands forming an initial elimination round.

In a further aspect of the invention each initial elimination round has at least 3 hands.

In a different aspect of the invention, a further wagering step is completed after the display of the fifth common card and prior to determining the winner of the hand.

In yet a further aspect of the invention, the best poker hand is the best five card poker hand.

In a further aspect of the invention, the method includes an initial step executed by the player of selecting a character from a group of characters displayed by the game terminal with said terminal using the selected character to identify the player on any game screens displayed by the terminal during the poker game.

In an aspect of the invention the method includes at least 3 initial elimination rounds.

In a preferred aspect of the invention the method includes 2 final elimination rounds.

In yet a further aspect of the invention each final elimination round includes at least 5 hands.

According to an aspect of the invention the terminal includes a player actuated step to automatically complete a hand for the remaining terminal generated players if said one player withdraws from a hand.

In a different aspect of the invention the method includes the terminal stopping the game if said one player is eliminated.

According to an aspect of the invention the method includes 3 initial elimination rounds followed by two final elimination rounds. Preferably each final elimination round includes at least 5 hands.

• Provisional Patent
• Utility Patent

• What Is a Patent?
• What Is a Trademark or Servicemark?
• What Is a Copyright?
• Patent Laws