Patent ID: 7883409

Claim:
A gaming machine adapted for accepting wagers, playing primary games based on the wagers and granting monetary awards based on the results of the primary games, comprising: an exterior housing arranged to contain a plurality of internal gaming machine components therein; a master gaming controller in communication with at least one of said plurality of internal gaming machine components, said master gaming controller being adapted to control one or more aspects of said primary games; a player tracking device in communication with said master gaming controller and adapted to track both player activity and primary game results at said gaming machine, wherein said player tracking device is further adapted to facilitate the play of a first automated ticket drawing bonus game based at least in part on one or more of said primary game results, said first automated ticket drawing bonus game having a plurality of ticket entries entered during a first ticket entry period of said first automated ticket drawing bonus game that are put into an overall ticket pool from which one or more winning tickets are drawn at random and being structured to have escalating and discrete prize levels in each subsequent respective automated ticket drawing, wherein graduation from at least one of said discrete prize levels to the next prize level requires a plurality of additional ticket entries in the subsequent respective ticket drawing bonus game to said overall ticket pool; and at least one display device in communication with said master gaming controller, said player tracking device, or both, wherein said at least one display device is adapted to display information regarding said first automated ticket drawing bonus game having escalating and discrete prize levels.