Patent ID: 9569935
Date: 2017-02-14
CPC Classifications: A63F,G07F

Claim:
1. A poker gaming device comprising, a body structure having a player input device; a video display device housed in the body structure, the video display including a game portion having a grid of multiple card positions; a memory device enclosed in the body structure, the memory device storing executable instructions and a plurality of virtual cards each having a rank value and a suit type, and configured to store a credit amount; a wager input device housed in the body structure, the wager input device structured to receive physical items associated with a currency value; and a processor enclosed in the body structure, the processor arranged to execute the instructions stored in the memory to: receive a signal from the wager input device indicating receipt of a physical item associated with a currency value; increase the credit amount stored in the memory based on the currency value of the received physical item; receive a wager on a poker game of chance, an amount of the wager deducted from the credit amount stored in the memory; display a first number of the plurality of virtual cards in the card positions of the grid, the displayed first number of virtual cards forming a poker hand; determine whether two or more of the displayed virtual cards meet a combination criterion; combine the two or more determined cards when said cards meet the combination criterion, the cards being combined in a single card position in the grid, wherein the combination of two or more determined cards in the single card position is a multi-indicia card symbol showing each of the combined cards; replace cards combined to a different card position on the grid with replacement cards from the plurality of virtual cards, where each grid position includes either a single virtual card or a multi-indicia card; and identify a plurality of resulting hands for the poker hand when one or more of the card positions of the grid are associated with a multiple-indicia card, each of the plurality of resulting hands including a different subset of a total of the cards by splitting indicia of the multiple-indicia card into individual cards and making combinations using the other cards in the card positions of the grid to generate the plurality of resulting hands; evaluate each of the generated plurality of first resulting hands to determine if it is associated with any awards; and increase the credit amount stored in a memory by amounts of any awards determined from the evaluated plurality of first resulting hands.