Portable electronic bingo device
AssigneeBettina Corporation
InventorWilliam G. Kellen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An electronic bingo device used for dispensing bingo cards and tracking the cards for bingo during play. The apparatus is equipped with a conventional computer hardware platform and software tailored to track a bingo game by use of a game key with memory for storing data representative of a set of bingo game data including winning patterns and wild cards used during each game. In addition, a player's allocation of bingo cards is stored on the game key. Bingo cards stored in the device corresponding to the number allocated are used for game play. As the player enters the numbers are called out in the bingo hall. The device monitors each card for bingo.
Claims18
An electronic game apparatus comprising:
- memory adapted to store bingo rules for at least one round of bingo, a plurality of bingo cards and an identifier for the number of bingo cards in play;
- a user interface including a display adapted to display at least one bingo card and a key pad configured for entry of bingo numbers;
- and
- a central processing unit adapted under the control of software to:
- markup said bingo cards in play during a bingo game according to said bingo rules in response to entry of bingo numbers using said key pad;
- and
- provide said user interface with at least one of said bingo cards in play, wherein said bingo card provided to said user interface is selected by said central processing unit as being most likely to win the round of bingo.
An electronic game apparatus comprising:
- a first memory location to permanently store a plurality of bingo cards;
- a user interface;
- a processor under the control of software to select at least one bingo card from said plurality of bingo cards, wherein said processor selects said at least one bingo card according to a selection rule independent of the user;
- and
- a second memory location to store at least one identifier for a quantity of bingo cards in play during at least one round of bingo and said processor selects bingo cards in quantities equivalent to said at least one identifier.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.