Poquere: An Online Game Blending Word Skills with Psychology and Strategy

Abstract

Poquere is a unique game that blends word creation and scoring with the competitive and psychological aspects of Texas Holdem style Poker, making it engaging and addictive. Several innovations are defined that make the game exciting in an online social gaming context and allow unique monetization capabilities.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of playing a multiplayer word making and betting card game for 2 to 8 players; where each player is randomly dealt two cards not visible to the other players and five community cards that are dealt face-down and shared amongst all players; where betting proceeds in rounds and community cards are opened sequentially after each round; where the winner is the player with the highest-scoring legal word made using between 3-5 cards out of the 7 possible cards (2 in hand and 5 community cards) 
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  where the cards are drawn from a deck consisting of between 52 to 104 cards each having one to three letters and a point-score. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  where the game is played on line amongst multiple players who may be synchronously or asynchronously connected to a server via computers, mobile phones, tablets, or any other graphical computing device. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1  where the game is played with physical cards and all players are physically present in the same location. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  where the letters on the cards are in any alphabetic script such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, or Devnagri alphabet. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1  where special bonus points are awarded for words made with 4 or 5 cards. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1  where special bonus points are awarded for palindromes (words reading the same backwards), or semordnilaps (words which form different but still legal words when read backwards. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1  where the dictionaries defining the legal word is in any language suitable to the alphabet in  claim 5 . 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1  where the dictionaries defining the legal words are drawn from specialized words used by specific groups such as legal words, or medical terms. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1  where the reverse side of the cards have graphics or logos placed on them for the purpose of generating advertising revenue. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 3  where one or more of the players are replaced by computer-generated players (bots) whose actions simulate those of a real player. 
       The method of  claim 1  where cards are dealt on a non-random basis to improve the odds of each player making at least one word.