Patent ID: 8500539

Claim:
A method of operating a gaming machine, the method including: (a) displaying an image of a card at an electronic display device of the gaming machine, the image of the card including an n row by m column matrix of locations with one or more paylines defined across the matrix of locations, and wherein a paytable for the gaming machine defines one or more winning paylines, each winning payline being correlated in the paytable with one or more awards; (b) with a system of one or more processors associated with the gaming machine, causing the electronic display device to randomly populate each of the locations with indicia from a finite set of indicia, the number of locations being less than the size of the finite set; (c) with the system of one or more processors associated with the gaming machine, randomly selecting an indicia from the finite set and determining whether a match occurs on the card between the randomly selected indicia and an indicia populating a location of the matrix; (d) if a match occurs in step (c), then: (i) daubing the location of the matching indicia in the matrix of locations, and (ii) rotating the matching indicia to an end position of an associated payline in the displayed card image by moving the matching indicia from its original position in the associated payline to the end position and shifting the indicia between the original position of the matching indicia and the end position one position toward the original position of the matching indicia; (e) repeating steps (c) and (d) until a predetermined number of indicia have been selected and any match has been daubed and rotated according to step (d); (f) with the system of one or more processors associated with the gaming machine, identifying any winning paylines produced in the displayed card image through steps (c), (d), and (e); and (g) for each winning payline identified at step (f), providing the one or more awards correlated to that respective winning payline in the paytable.