Patent ID: 11922779
Assignee: UNIVERSAL ENTERTAINMENT CORPORATION
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  A | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A tournament management device which comprises a transmission/reception communication port for communications with the outside and which is connected to gaming tables in a communicable manner, the tournament management device further comprising a control unit programmed to execute:
a) a process of creating tournament basic information from data including an input game content and the number of participants, and storing the tournament basic information;
b) a process of creating, based on the tournament basic information, promotion information which asks for participation in a tournament, sampling sets of contact address information associated with the particular number of members from among sets of membership information stored in a membership database in advance, and sending the promotion information by using the sets of the contact address information;
c) a process of sending a register screen for participating in the tournament to the outside upon receiving membership identification information associated with membership information regarding one of the members who are asked for the participation;
d) a register process of receiving a register input to the register screen and storing one of the participants of the tournament in association with the membership identification information on condition that predetermined register information is supplied; and
e) a process of holding the tournament with registered participants based on the tournament basic information,
wherein, registers made in the processes c) and d) are pre-registrations, and the control unit is programmed to further execute:
a process of executing the processes c) and d), accepting the same number of pre-registrations as the maximum number of the participants stored in advance, accepting a pre-registration as a preliminary registration in a case where the number of the participants exceeds the maximum number of the participants, notifying an acceptance target that the preliminary registration is made, and storing membership identification information of that preliminary registration and the rank of the participant who made that preliminary registration among the participants having made preliminary registrations;
based on a time limit to participate in the tournament, a process of accepting registrations of members who are going to participate at that time and authenticating information indicating that the registrations are made;
a process of specifying membership information for which the pre-registration is made and for which the registration is not made even after the preset time limit and sending cancellation information of canceling the pre-registration based on contact address information of the membership information;
a process of notifying contact address information of one of the sets of the membership information of information indicating that the participation is available, a place to participate in the tournament, and the time limit, based on a waiting order of sets of membership information for which the preliminary registrations are made, and waiting for a predetermined time in accordance with the time limit in order to receive participation request information; and
a process which is executed in a case where the registration of the participation is not made after elapse of the predetermined time and which repeats a process of making notification about the information indicating that the participation is available, the place to participate in the tournament, and the time limit again based on the sets of the stored membership information for which the preliminary registration is made and a process of waiting for the predetermined time in accordance with the time limit in order to receive the participation request information.