Patent ID: 7584123

Claim:
An electronic ticket auction system, comprising: a computer system configured to receive over a network user ticket bids in a ticket auction, including a bid from a first user and a bid from a second user, wherein the first user bid includes a first bid amount, and the second user bid includes a second bid amount that is less than the first bid amount; a data store configured to store the bid amounts; and program code stored in computer readable memory, the program code configured to: determine which bids are winning bids, wherein the winning bids include at least the first bid and the second bid; determine a ticket price for the users associated with the winning bids based on the second bid amount, wherein the first user is assigned a ticket at a price based on the second amount and that is less than the first bid amount; cause an auction user interface to be displayed to at least one user, the auction user interface identifying: an event for which tickets are being auctioned: a plurality of ticket groups for the event for which tickets are being auctioned; a maximum number of tickets that a given user can bid on with respect to tickets in a first ticket group of the plurality of ticket groups, wherein the maximum number is less than the number of tickets in the first ticket group that are up for bid; corresponding current low winning bids for the ticket groups; a minimum acceptable bid; and a minimum bid increment; selectively perform fair slotting packing and/or full shuffling packing in response to a packing instruction accessed from computer readable memory.