Patent ID: 8764543

Claim:
A method of conducting a game of bingo on a bingo server and a plurality of player stations, comprising: conducting on the plurality of player stations an enrolment process in which at least one player enrolls to participate in said bingo game, said bingo game having at least a game-ending pattern and a participation-ending pattern, said game-ending pattern being either identical or different from said participation-ending pattern; evaluating on the bingo server a number of players having enrolled in view of a minimal number of players in a team of players with said number of players having enrolled being lower than said minimum number of players; when said number of players having enrolled is lower than said minimal number of players, generating on the bingo server at least one virtual player to add to said team of players to complete size of said team of players to said minimal number of players; registering, on both the bingo server and on each of the plurality of player stations at least one bingo card bearing indicia for each player or virtual player in said team of players, each of said at least one bingo card being unique; on the bingo server, drawing bingo indicia; comparing said drawn bingo indicia to said bingo cards registered in association with each of said player or virtual player of said team of players; when said participation-ending pattern is formed on a bingo card registered in said bingo game, ending a process of distributing participation prizes regardless of whether the player associated with the bingo card on which is formed said participation-ending pattern is a virtual player or not; when a game-ending pattern is formed on a bingo card registered in said bingo game, evaluating on the bingo server whether said bingo card is associated with a player or a virtual player; and upon evaluation that the winner is a virtual player, disregarding said game-ending pattern being formed, thereby continuing a process of establishing a winning player of said bingo game.