Patent ID: 6874784

Claim:
A method of playing a card game comprising: providing at least one set of playing cards; dealing a first set of cards all face up and in a manner such that the cards are arranged in a row, each card representing a first card of one hand of a plurality of separate hands that are going to be completely formed when a dealer deals all cards necessary to complete all of the separate hands; assigning a first difficulty factor to the row of cards formed by the first set of cards; providing a player with the opportunity to make a wager on each of the cards of the first set; dealing a second set of cards all face up and in a manner such that the cards of the second set are arranged in a row and are adjacent to and aligned with the row of cards formed by the first set of cards, each card of the second set representing a second card of one hand of the plurality of separate hands that are going to be completely formed when the dealer deals all cards necessary to complete all of the separate hands; assigning a second difficulty factor to the row of cards formed by the second set of cards; providing a player with the opportunity to make a wager on each of the cards of the second set; dealing a third set of cards all face up and in a manner such that the cards of the third set are arranged in a row and adjacent to and aligned with the row of cards formed by the second set of cards, each card of the third set representing a third card of one hand of the plurality of separate hands that are going to be completely formed when the dealer deals all cards necessary to complete all of the separate hands; assigning a third difficulty factor to the row of cards formed by the third set of cards; providing a player with the opportunity to make a wager on each of the cards of the third set; dealing additional sets of cards all face up to complete all of the separate hands of cards, the additional sets of cards being dealt so that the additional sets of cards are arranged in rows that are aligned with the rows of cards formed by the first, second and third sets of cards thereby forming a plurality of rows and columns of cards, each column of cards defining a separate and complete hand of cards; determining the poker hand ranking of each separate and complete hand of cards; determining which of the separate and complete hands of cards is the winning hand; and paying winnings to the player based on (i) the player's wagers that correspond to the winning hand, (ii) a predetermined payout schedule and (iii) the difficulty factors.