Digital video and audio collectible card – Claims any physical card with an image that also functions as a CD-ROM. Examples include sports and fantasy cards with embedded video and pictures.

It’s a pretty short patent, and even specifically notes that it claims “a combination of a traditional collectible card with the ability to be read like a CD-ROM.” I thought (IANAL) that simply combining two things could not be patented. And no prior art for this?

Wagering game with table bonus – A side bet during a game where you bet on whether anyone at the table will get a hand of a certain rank or higher.

Method, apparatus and article for computational sequence generation and playing card distribution – A machine that generates a pseudo-random sequence and then arranges the cards into that sequence, in order to “improve shuffling”.

Orienting information presented to users located at different sides of a display surface – For Microsoft Surface, a method of automatically orienting text specific to a user so that it can be read by the user. By automatic, they mean after the user indicates where he or she is standing, by means of a touch or an object.

Assigned to Microsoft. It doesn’t seem to pass the non-obvious test, as far as I can see. No one would have thought of orienting text for each player at the sides of a table surface?

Table game, related tournament and entertainment broadcast – A Heads Up poker tournament, where members of one team sit on one side of the table, each opposite an opponent, the common cards are shared by all players, and you only have to beat your opposite. And a tournament system to go with it.

Play four poker with bad beat feature – Four card poker (because there are three and five card poker games, but not too many four card poker games). Assigned to Shuffle Master, the second one in this post; they’ve claimed a whole lot of patents covered in previous posts, too.

Memory and assembly game – A cooperative memory game, where each mistake requires you to assemble an object (spaceship) and you all win if you finish before the object is assembled. Assigned to Mattel.

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Square peg round hole game – Players each have a box and take square pegs and try to stuff them into the box’s round holes. The first player to do so gets 3000 points, plus 10 points per unused peg from each other player. First player to get 6000 points wins.

… I think it’s the scoring system that disturbs me most, sad to say.

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Faro’s revenge card game – A design patent, from something called L.B.B. Games:

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Method for playing a poker game – From the abstract: “During play, the players are playing both their own hand and a ‘party hand’. Improving one’s hand, and, if applicable, wagering, requires exchanging cards from the hand one is playing with the party hand, with the restriction that the party hand must be improved using a standard poker ranking system. Both hands the public and the private will then split the pot.”

Casino poker game with community hand player choice (pick and win poker) – Offering the player a choice of which hand to play at the start of a Hold’em game, giving the dealer all the other hands. From the claim: “By permitting players to choose between community hands, players have a perception that premium hands are more easily attained.” The house maintains the advantage, supposedly.

Dice game – Not a dice game. Using six special cards numbered 1 to 6 (or multiple sets of these six cards) to simulate a dice roll. This allows the dealer to place the six cards face down, have the player select one of the cards, and then reveal it, in order to obtain his random result. Supposedly makes for more excitement.

Active dealer version of blackjack – This is, in fact, identical to last month’s patent with the same name, with the addition of the phrase: “The present invention further varies the standard game of blackjack by providing the option of playing the hand to obtain a target hand having a card sum as close to 22 as possible (as opposed to 21) without going over 22 and wherein the soft ace value is 12, instead of 11 (e.g. aces are valued as either 1 or 12, instead of 1 or 11).”