Sports and Casino Games

Hey guys,

The following are three games that blend sports and casino game:


The first link was patented fairly recently, so perhaps it still has a chance to succeed. The other ones have been around for some time, and they were invented by the same person. I couldn't find anymore information on those final two so I figure they are dead products. The last link is actually a playable demo of a slots game.

Ironically (or perhaps not) the two inventors are both seemingly very prestigious lawyers who had a considerable amount of expendable income to pursue a casino game.

As you can tell by my signature, I also have invented a sports/casino game called "craps baseball". The only aspects of the game which I have settled on are the rules of the game. Any gambling or wagering systems that will accompany those rules are very much in the air. And they may never be implemented, I am still not sure. I would love to go ahead and patent the game and do everything else that needs to be done to even get a shot at the casino. But I also understand that is a far fetched dream that may never come.

Anyway, I don't expect you to read through the patent documents for the games (I didn't). But why do you think games like these fail? Can I do anything to set me apart from these other games?

Quote: crapsbaseballguy

Anyway, I don't expect you to read through the patent documents for the games (I didn't). But why do you think games like these fail? Can I do anything to set me apart from these other games?

From what I understand, it's a long, long, long uphill slog just getting a game approved, never mind actually marketing it. And to be viable at all, a new game would have to offer something existing games don't, yet be easily understandable to the average casino patron, who, it must be remembered, has left his brain in the glove compartment. So it has to be both intriguing and not complex, as well as not resembling any existing casino game too closely. So given that all the licensing and regulatory hurdles have to be cleared (at God knows what expense) before a new game can even be test marketed, it's not surprising that few new games appear.

I personally wouldn't play baseball craps because all the players would be spitting on the table every few seconds, but that's just me.

Quote: crapsbaseballguy

As you can tell by my signature, I also have invented a sports/casino game called "craps baseball". The only aspects of the game which I have settled on are the rules of the game. Any gambling or wagering systems that will accompany those rules are very much in the air. And they may never be implemented, I am still not sure. I would love to go ahead and patent the game and do everything else that needs to be done to even get a shot at the casino. But I also understand that is a far fetched dream that may never come.

Anyway, I don't expect you to read through the patent documents for the games (I didn't). But why do you think games like these fail? Can I do anything to set me apart from these other games?

and

Quote: crapsbaseballguy

Ironically (or perhaps not) the two inventors are both seemingly very prestigious lawyers who had a considerable amount of expendable income to pursue a casino game.

Well, I am the kind of guy who DOES read through patents; I've done it extensively in the development of my own patent for EZ Pai Gow, and in the protection of it with my lawyer from a "shake-down" attempt (bogus infringement claim to get upfront cash, under the threat of false litigation.) I got the jist of their game.

1. Lawyers are not designers. Not so strangely, a very good initial patent draft (in non-legalese) is better done by a knowledgeable game designer with math experience in conjunction with the attorney than by an attorney alone, as the attorney's job is to essentially translate that actual invention into a final patent (legalese) draft; also, arguments of game-play distinctions and similarities (for infringement issues) is also best described by a reviewing game designer or reviewer, where the lawyers can frame and finalize the "casino world" arguments into legal arguements for and against infringement.

To use an analogy, translators are frequently poor novelists or creators, in spite of being good writers between two languages in "transfering" creations that were written by others. In this case, gaming industry patent attorneys are very good at translating game creations and concepts into a legal frameworks, while being poor at initially generating these game creations. Their job is not always to create or to discover or to design, but to deliver with fidelity exactly what some game designer created - into the needed "courtroom" or "patent office" realm.
The game designer - and not only the patent attorney - must also read ALL possibly infringing patents thoroughly and describe in concrete gaming details how the games are actually very different or very similar in casino-world play, or how they really can or cannot be enabled in a casino envorment, or are or are not seemingly infringable equivelants.

Simply put, great attorneys might make poor original game designers, by not seeing themselves the crucial and desirable game details or larger game design in terms of the real-world "casino-play" picture, from career-long casino table game pit experience or constantly play experience. (Once they see it, they can translate). And game design is not really an attorney's job or career, even one in the gaming industry.

2. The funny thing is, as poor a casino game as that patent describes - it actually describes some pretty good "family-type board games" ideas, a la Hasbro or Monopoly, Now THAT they should look into! But if they showed that game idea as a production casino game (as clearly described in the patent) to a casino manager or shift manager, they'd be cut off very quickly and dismissed; I mean laughed right out of Las Vegas. No concept of speed-of-play, or game protection, or casino dealing procedures, or mathematical house edge or hands-per-hour or potential table hold is present.

In reviewing patents of me and my business partner, I scan through thousands of casino game design patents, 99% of which will never see the light of a casino floor, to spot the ones that may infringe us (or that we may infringe during the design stage, to then use a different game implimentation method without infringement.) We do this BEFORE we contact our gaming lawyer, so that he sees relevant stuff, and to add to what he finds, to cut down on his billable time, and to allow him time fo his other clients.

15,000 casino related table game patents may produce about twenty viable casino products; all the rest the USPTO makes a TON of money on what are essentially people's pipe dreams, unusable by the gaming industry as hoped - including some submissions by lawyers.

And the patent end is all before:
1. preliminary gaming math with a gaming mathematician;
2. field trialing it to a select group of gaming professionals
3. Revising the game based on internal field trials; producing documentation (product description/marketing pamphlets
4. Adding revsion to the patent based on the game's revision from internal field trial and secondary gaming math; file for utility patent.
5. Pitching the game to distributors (DEQ, SMI, Galaxy, and Gaming Network) HOPING to hear a yes - AND see a revenue-sharing contract;
6. Final math to submit to gaming;
7. Shopping to sign up some casino to field trial the game/letter of intent to field trial for gaming application
8. Submission of Gaming Application;
9. Baby-sitting the field trial of your new game
10. Gaming Approval to distribute;
11. Your distributors sales force getting about 15 games out, the critical mass needed for the game to go above the industry's radar and see the game, for larger sales.
12. Re-submitting gaming applications in many states, to increase potential sales
etc...

Good luick for these lawyers with their games.

Quote: crapsbaseballguy

As you can tell by my signature, I also have invented a sports/casino game called "craps baseball". The only aspects of the game which I have settled on are the rules of the game. Any gambling or wagering systems that will accompany those rules are very much in the air. And they may never be implemented, I am still not sure. I would love to go ahead and patent the game and do everything else that needs to be done to even get a shot at the casino. But I also understand that is a far fetched dream that may never come.

Anyway, I don't expect you to read through the patent documents for the games (I didn't). But why do you think games like these fail? Can I do anything to set me apart from these other games?

Have you considered working/re-working the game with a game designer who has real games out? I'm speaking of MathExtremist; he's a game designer and a gaming mathematician, and that's his livelyhood. He can give you a spot-on opinion, and if good, then on how to proceed - if you are serious.

Personally, I have seen some good, succesful products that mix games: Pai Gow Mania mixes three card poker and Pai Gow Poker; 21+3 mixes three-card poker and blackjack. Both made it to the casino floor, and 21+3 is very popular in the midwest. However, I am very skeptical and mixing sports and dice/cards.

But if you believe in it, and are willing to give a serious go of it, I recommend that you do contact MathExtremist here, or another gaming pro, to get an opinion.

If I'm reading this right, it may be too late to get a patent. He's already got a website with rules and whatnot on it, which is a public disclosure. From what I can tell, the game maps standard craps events (e.g. establishing a 10, making it easy) to baseball events. But craps is essentially a single-player game (bettor vs. casino) while baseball is a two-player (or team) game. I'm not sure how to reconcile that.

I love dice games, and I think the casino industry needs at least one more good one (Sic Bo doesn't count). I'm just not convinced that trying to repurpose craps will cut it. Craps has been reworked multiple times (Die Rich, Crapless, Scarney) and none of those versions ever really dented the penetration of the original.

Yes, Stacy - absolutely true about public disclosure for the one with the website and no patent; mindsmack might have no patent, but the other two links are provisional patents that might have been converted into utility patents. If they were not converted into utility patents, then they are public domain, and free to use.

And what is often attempted after that 'opps' occurance is to add (albeit somewhat artificially) new and novel features that are arguably relevant, and file as a "brand-new enough" game. Shady, yes, but it is sometimes satisfactory, sometimes not. The risk is that others may file a "modified enough" version from the public disclosre if they know that an application is absent. A search at www.uspto.gov can tell us some info.

Your comment:

Quote: MathExtremist

I love dice games, and I think the casino industry needs at least one more good one (Sic Bo doesn't count). I'm just not convinced that trying to repurpose craps will cut it. Craps has been reworked multiple times (Die Rich, Crapless, Scarney) and none of those versions ever really dented the penetration of the original.

is spot-on.

But side bets are very addable to dice if very fine (Fire bet, and of course Hard Pass!)

Again, some of these ideas may make for great table-board and pub games, but were expectantly directed as casino type games.

Wow. Thanks for that synopsis Dan! Yeah both of the patents I posted seemed to be the respective person's pipedream. It just amuses how they align with my own pipedream.

Regarding trying to contact a math expert. Again, would love to, but not necessary at this conjecture. I'd rather for people to like it for the game itself not for any wagering system that may accompany the game.

In reference to me not being able to patent my game because it is already online, can someone elaborate on that rule?

Lastly, speaking to MathExtremist, baseball being a two player game may be the fait accompli but that's not to say it can be overcome in unconventional ways. Also I never tried to recapture Craps, even it seems like my intent. I rather say I was going for the novel approach of combining two games that naturally are not thought of together. At the same time, being accurate and respectful to both.

Quote: crapsbaseballguy

In reference to me not being able to patent my game because it is already online, can someone elaborate on that rule?

My best advice is to either (a) hire a patent attorney or (b) read some of the Nolo press books on DIY patents. The relevant laws are in 35 U.S.C. 102.

In my opinion most amateur game inventors get much too creative. The fact is that the vast majority of successful new games have been poker and blackjack variants. Also, everybody and his brother are inventing games that merge two or more existing games. Please stop, the market does not respond to such games well. Players want to focus on one concept at a time. I saw somebody with some kind of baseball game at the gaming show last year. It is a common question among those in the business, "What is the most ridiculous game at the show this year?" Last year, pretty much everybody said it was the baseball one.

Quote: Wizard

In my opinion most amateur game inventors get much too creative. The fact is that the vast majority of successful new games have been poker and blackjack variants. Also, everybody and his brother are inventing games that merge two or more existing games. Please stop, the market does not respond to such games well. Players want to focus on one concept at a time. I saw somebody with some kind of baseball game at the gaming show last year. It is a common question among those in the business, "What is the most ridiculous game at the show this year?" Last year, pretty much everybody said it was the baseball one.

I was so busy last year I didn't even get a chance to see most of the new games. But I agree - the out-of-the-box thinking for new game inventors is often a bit too far out of the box. Part of the problem is that there are no real guard rails around the process, so anyone can come up with anything. I'm in favor of innovation (obviously) but it also means that someone who hasn't done market research or gotten a feel for the industry is way, way behind. I'm working with a team right now that didn't do sufficient market research on a combination-type game. They brought me in several years after getting started and they're now regretting the large investments they've made to date. This is a fun business, but it's still a business. If you dream about being the next Ernie Moody or John Breeding, you've got a long, hard road ahead of you -- and getting to the end will require a lot of luck in addition to all the skill and tenacity you can muster. If you don't even know who Ernie Moody or John Breeding are, well...

You'll make more money pitching you game to a board game production company. There is room for baseball and football simulations out there from the basic to the advanced, but the market is niche and more money may mean "a few bucks and a published game".

I read through half the rules and there's no casino game there at all, and that's based on my assumption no-one really wants to read much more than 4 lines of basic rules for a gambling game.

Very true.

I just looked at the USPTO.gov site, typing in "casino" and "table" in all fields. There 3,350 responses.
The 100 most recent UTILITY patents stem from mid August.

Assuming that it's approximately $10,000 per full filing, that's $1,000,000 in legals fees, and none of them might make it.
Something to ponder. (edit: and a few are updates or new filings by industry heavy weights)

I skimmed the patents that were cited in this thread. I don't know the inventors but I do happen to know the patent attorneys they used for their patent work. If the inventors happened to be lawyers as well, then I guess they heeded the old saying that the lawyer who represents themself has a fool for a client. Other than a patent attorney who is just into developing games, there are actually 2 main instances I can think of in which patent attorney naturally becomes creative. The first is when drafting a patent application. In my experience, good patent lawyers will routinely add features and variations of the invention or otherwise find ways to broaden the description of the invention. Without getting too detailed, this is usually done to either fully enable the invention or in an attempt to obtain broader and/or stronger rights for the client should the patent ever be litigated. The other time a patent lawyer can crossover to the development side is when advising on "design-around" options, that is, changing your invention in a way so that it avoids infringing someone else's patent. Every so often, these circumstances result in the patent attorney contributing something that requires naming them as a joint inventor.

I do know a few patent lawyers that have come up with successful games as game developers. I know a few titled game designers that have come up with successful games. Each of them can list the many great games they came up with that they thought would definitely work but failed. I call a successful game any game that has longevity, say over a year, in multiple jurisdictions or at least more than one casino. To put this in perspective, the VP of game development at a major gaming supplier told me a few years ago that 1 in 12 to 1 in 15 of the games they put out are successful. He recently told me it's been more like 1 in 100 in the last year or so. Maybe there's some psychological explanation - perhaps sticking with the old standby games is analogous to eating comfort food during tough times. Or maybe their just pushing bad games. Whatever the reason, this statistic comes from the VP at a company that enjoys a clear advantage as a result of their market position and existing distribution network, so their games should have a better chance to succeed than others because of the force they can put behind it. As someone alluded to in this thread there definitely seems to be a difference between the type of game that works in a casino and other games. And even some games that might work in an off-strip casino will not work on the strip, or vice versa. The games that have had success seem to me to be almost directed to a particular type of player.

Quote: MathExtremist

I love dice games, and I think the casino industry needs at least one more good one (Sic Bo doesn't count). I'm just not convinced that trying to repurpose craps will cut it. Craps has been reworked multiple times (Die Rich, Crapless, Scarney) and none of those versions ever really dented the penetration of the original.

I don't thank a new dice games can make it to the Casino.

Here is one of my dice game Casino Poker-Dice

The thing is - we just don't know what will or will not make it in a casino, we really don't.

We have ideas, beliefs, opinions. We might know what's bad, but we don't know what's good, what will be a hit, until 25+ installs occur and we can see the data. That's it.

My opinion is that a good new side bet for craps or roulette is doable, especially a progressive for roulette (hello Dave M.) And Pai Gow poker only has the standard "positive" progressive - which pretty much covers the regular bonus bet anyway; it "might" take a bad beat progressive, a la regular poker.

Blackjack is overflowing with side bets and variations; but Instant 18 made some inroads. Good for GN! (Gaming Network.)

Quote: MrCasinoGames

I don't think a new dice game can make it to the Casino.

How about Hard Luck?

Two players: dealer (designated dice thrower) and banker, two dice each. Object: throw a higher sum than opponent. Win pays even money.

Tie-sums (146 in all) happen three ways:

(1) hard-hard (all four dice same, a quadruple) = pay even money to both Dealer and Banker bets (6 ways)

(2) easy-easy, same combo (two-pair X&Y) = take half from both (60 ways)

(3) easy-easy, diff. combo (one-pair X&Y=S, one pair W&Z=S) = higher-order combo wins (80 ways in all, 40 behooving each).

Definition: higher order = having smaller difference between numbers on each die. For example: 3&3 beats 2&4 and 1&5, 2&4 beats 1&5. Thus, hardways would be a special case included in the rule. Very simple to use, actually.

House edge on the above description = 1.85%

Side bets

(1) Spread - difference between dice sums - pays on a scale as follows (HA = 11.73% / HA = 2.78%):

10-Spread (maximum, 2 possible ways) 80 to 1 / 84 to 1
9-Spread (8 ways) 20 to 1 / 21 to 1
8-Spread (20 ways) 8 to 1 / 42 to 5
7-Spread (40 ways) 4 to 1 / 21 to 5
6-Spread (70 ways) 2 to 1 / 12 to 5
5-Spread (minimum, 112 ways) 1 to 1 / 3 to 2

(2) Chance - four-die outcome, regardless of which dice are whose

Any Triple (X&X&X&Y, 120 ways) pays 2 to 1
Any Two-Pair (X&X&Y&Y, 90 ways) pays 3 to 1
Any Straight (1&2&3&4, 2&3&4&5, or 3&4&5&6, 72 ways in all) pays 4 to 1
Any Quadruple (X&X&X&X, 6 ways, obviously) pays 23 to 1 (HA = 5.56%) or 29 to 1 (HA = 2.78%)

(3) Above- or Below-14: four-die total of greater than or less than 14, each pays even money (HA = 11.27%) or 6 to 5 (HA = 2.39%)

Dealer chooses which dice to be his own and throws both his own and the banker's dice (to keep the appearance of absolute honesty). Keeps dice as long as the Dealer bets continue to win (Like-combo tie with banker counts as a loss).

Quote: NowTheSerpent

How about Hard Luck?

Didn't you already start a thread for this topic?

In fact, you started TWO of them!

This one: https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/gaming-business/game-inventors/7156-hard-luck/ already had several replies.

Well I went ahead and created a prototype for how wagering would work with my game. Try it out guys! Here is the direct link:

I don't expect to see my game in a casino ever, but I know it's a unique game that can be enjoyed by all kinds of game enthusiasts.