Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

UNLV students invent games that might one day hit casinos

College Center for Gaming Innovation

Aaron Mayes / UNLV Photo Services

UNLV Harrah Hotel College Center for Gaming Innovation student Taylor Ross, center, and UNLV Center for Gaming Innovation Director Mark Yoseloff play 40 Times Double Down blackjack, a game invented by Ross.

Click to enlarge photo

UNLV gaming entrepreneur student Charlie Bao Wang invented Pai Wow Poker, which can be played at Palace Station.

About the Center

• The UNLV Center for Gaming Innovation has filed 25 provisional patent applications in its first two years of operation.

• Eight to 10 student patents have been sold, and three new companies have been created because of the center.

• About 25 students work with the center annually, but not all are enrolled at UNLV. Members of the public also can take the course.

For more information about classes offered at the Center for Gaming Innovation, email [email protected].

Trial run

Super 3 Card and Even the Odds are scheduled to be featured Nov. 1 at Red Rock Resort, at an event where gamblers were invited to try the new games.

At UNLV’s Center for Gaming Innovation, students double as inventors — and their creations can end up on local casino floors.

The center offers a class on subjects such as the history of gaming innovation, the mathematics of gambling and intellectual property law. Its main focus, however, is the projects students create: casino games that often work their way through the patent process and may eventually appear before gamblers.

Not every game created in the class is patented, but the ones that are receive support from the center. In return, students must agree to pay the university 20 percent of any income received from products created in the program.

It’s not easy coming up with new games, and students are encouraged to start with a simple concept.

“I ask them initially to give us only the germ of the idea,” said Mark Yoseloff, the center’s executive director. “Most games can be described in two or three sentences.”

As the ideas are fleshed out, students receive thorough feedback from their peers and the center staff. Daniel Sahl, the center’s associate director, said that interaction is what makes the program unique.

“In this class, you’re getting feedback on this project throughout the semester, with the expectation that you’re going to refine it based on that feedback,” Sahl said. “That’s how the real world works.”

The center has produced a range of products since it was created, including:

• Even the Odds. Players and the dealer are given one card face down and two cards face up. The player’s goal is for his point total to beat the dealer’s — but only even totals play. So if a player’s first two face-up cards have a total value that is odd, they must play the third card; if it’s even, they can choose. Sahl, a former student in the course, created this game. He said his goal was to develop a game that was simple and fast to play, with math that favored the house but still was attractive to players.

• Super 3 Card. In this faster variation of three-card poker, players have less dead time between hands, and cards are dealt from a multideck shoe. Gamblers decide whether to play against the dealer after receiving two cards face up compared with the dealer’s one card face up.

• Pai Wow Poker. This game is a variation on pai gow poker that provides players with more options for setting hands. It is more strategy-based than the traditional version.

At first, inventor and former student Charlie Bao Wang’s Pai Wow game wasn’t chosen for the patent process. But after Wang refined it with help from the center’s staff, the game was put on the casino floor of Palace Station — which, coincidentally, is where Wang works.

He said it was an “indescribable feeling” to see his game inside an actual casino.

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