January Board and Card Game Patents

Welcome to a new year of board and card game patents. Will this year's patents be just as dumb and useless and previous years'? Stay tuned!

You can peruse the last year and a half of these posts by visiting the right sidebar of my blog.

January's Patents

Domino tile set with curved pieces - A design patent for quarter-circle dominoes with numerals on them. And another patent for the same thing with "+"s instead of a "0"s on the appropriate pieces. These both follow a May 2007 patent for the same thing, but with points instead of numerals on the domino faces.

All of these are for the game Bendomino, by Thierry Denoual. (Ignore the rating on BGG, as it is a result of several shill ratings.)

Frosted crystal domino - another design patent. Something called "Umbra Luminos plastic dominoes"? Supposedly at unclegames.com, but I couldn't find them

Method for player-influenced random distribution of game tokens - This patent insists that shuffling cards and computer card shuffling are both subject to cheating. Therefore, it proposes a new method:

For every card that must be dealt out, each play chooses A.sub.i and B.sub.i to arrive at C=SIGMA.B.sub.i. G.sub.i as a function of first units A.sub.i and C is as follows: each player's first unit is added to C to yield an intermediate value I.sub.i, i.e., I.sub.i=A.sub.i+C. Thereafter, if I.sub.i is within the range 1-52, the card assigned to the player P.sub.i is chosen from a matrix in which each card is assigned a unique number between 1 and 52. If I.sub.i is greater than 52, the number 52 is repeatedly subtracted from I.sub.i until a value is obtained which is within the range 1-52. That value is used to assign a card to player P.sub.i using the matrix.

Having completed all of this once for each player, each player now has a single card. The method then requires each player to repeat this for each additional card. It goes on to say how this method is particularly suited to such games as poker and so on.

*blink* *blink*

Leaving aside the glaringly obvious problem that no one in their right mind is ever going to do this in order to play a game, you are still left with the other glaringly obvious problem: how is this less susceptible to cheating?

Casino poker game - Texas Hold'em where all players' cards are face up, thereby eliminating any possibility of bluffing. However, the house receives two cards face down.

Board game and method to play -

Several designs for board games have been designed in the past. None of them, however, include a board, green numbered pieces, a card set, and a point chip set for both adults and children, wherein players make logical decisions based on the possibilities of gaining or losing points.

A betting game specifically designed with kids of age 6 or greater in mind. Essentially, there are two decks of cards: a green deck contains 4o cards numbered 1 to 10 and 6 wilds. A purple deck contains exclusive range cards 1-1, 1-2, and so on up to 1-10.

You are dealt a purple card and get to bet whether a green card will fall between the two numbers on your purple card. Note that the number must fall exclusively between the numbers, so a 1 or 10 green card will never win, and neither will a wild. Also note that a purple 1-1 or 1-2 card can never win.

You win or lose, and play passes to the left.

New York mafia board game - A Monopoly-style game called "Wiseguyz: the Game" where you gain "rank" the more property you purchase, and you only have to pay rent if you land on properties of someone with more rank than you. The ranks are: nobody, associate, soldier, capo, underboss and godfather. The winner is the first to become godfather.

Card game apparatus and method - A card game with five suits. Draw cards and do what they say until someone wins.

Method for playing a gambling game - Super Keno, which allows players to bet on other events that may happen in the game, such as someone else winning.

Forty-two card game and method of playing the same - A funny deck of cards with tigers and dragons, but the game is simply Baccarat with a bit of poker.

Method of playing wagering games - A dice game similar to Craps. Roll two dice, and then keep rolling until the sum is less than the first roll or you've rolled a certain number of times.

Video game system using trading cards - This sounds a whole lot like Eye of Judgment or Culdcept, but I'm not entirely sure. The patent is by Carl P. Pearson.

Presidential election game - A political roll-and-move board game called The Prez.

Yehuda