November Board and Card Game Patents

African American board game system and method – You just know it’s going to be a good patent when it starts off trying to copyright itself (which, afaik, is impossible).

A trivia game celebrating African-American culture, etc. Includes an electronic assistant to display the answers. The assistant doodad gets covered with “an African American male profile from the 1970’s decade including an African American “Fro” hair style, and large triangular side-burns, a grooming style popular with men in the 1970’s.”

Board game – A variant of Mancala.

Five pieces each start on every alternate space, other than the wells. On your turn, spin to determine which space you pick up, and then deposit one piece at a time in successive spaces, including your own well but skipping other players’ wells. You can choose in which direction to deposit; however, I assume you would always place closer to your well, so I don’t see any real decisions.

Electronic word puzzle – A hand-held electronic word search game called WordMania, where you shift rows and columns to find words.

System and method for playing a table and electronic card game – Five cards dealt face down to player and dealer. Bet on each card of the player being higher than a corresponding card of the dealer, and bet on the outcome of player’s hand altogether.

Wild Viking roulette – Playing “roulette” using a deck of cards for the markers, and another deck to draw one or more results. This increases the different types of bets. And it’s cheaper, too. Of course, it’s not quite as pretty.

Gaming apparatus and method of employing the same – This is actually a toy, not a game:

It’s better than the “cup – string – ball” thingie because there is no string to interfere with the path of the ball. But it’s worse, because your ball is going to get lost after three minutes.

Method of playing a combination of three card poker and draw poker – From the abstract: “One to seven people can play against the dealer. Each player places a wager on ante and pairplus (optional) and is dealt three cards face down and the dealer four cards face down. Each player has the option to discard one card and receive another by placing a wager equal to ante on the draw card space. If the player bets only pairplus he cannot receive a draw card. If the player decides to play he must place wager (equal to ante) on play space or fold and forfeit all wagers. The dealer then flips his four cards, discards one card to make his best three card hand. Dealer plays with Queen high or better. Dealer checks each played hand. Payouts are then determined based on the paytable and the amount the player wagered.”

Method of conducting a card game – From the abstract: “A wager is received on a designated hand. At least two hands are dealt. Optionally, if a hand has a natural hand score, wagers on the hand with the natural hand score may be rewarded. A hand score (the sum modulo ten of the values of the cards) is calculated for each hand and compared to a target value. A card is dealt to the hand further from the target value and a new hand score is calculated for that hand. If the new hand score remains further from the target value than the other hand, wagers on that hand are collected and wagers on the hand closer to the target value are rewarded. If the new hand score is closer to the target value than the other hand, a card is dealt to the hand further from the target value. Hand scores are re-calculated and wagers resolved.”

Baccarat insurance game – Poker-like insurance bets on Baccarat.

Method of playing a baccarat card game variation – A somewhat more complicated and competitive version of Baccarat, with a number of community cards.

Multi-player bingo with slept awards reverting to progressive jackpot pool – A complicated multi-player Bingo game using electronic systems and delayed reward possibilities.

Card game enabling separate evaluations for multiple game outcome combinations – Yet another patent for forming a grid of cards and a player choosing one line of the grid to play.

Game table with lights – A billiards (or other) table with lights.

Poker game system having bad beat pot and method of conducting the same – Bad beats are payouts to what should otherwise be good hands that have the astonishingly bad luck of drawing exactly the card they don’t need on the last card (e.g. two players end with two straights, one higher than the other). Since this doesn’t happen very often, this patent proposes two payouts on a game: one normal, and one using all but the last card flip.

Dice game table felt – A design patent:

Poker games using cards and/or dice – Liar’s poker where each person can exchange cards (continuing, only if the new hand is at least as good as the previous one).

Interactive quest game – By my favorite company, Creative Kingdoms. This is an entire house full of objects with RFID chips, computer monitoring, and live action role playing. And a whole lot more.