In the beginning the game company was called Sircoma. The were made with black and white tvs. They came out about the time of the Pong video coin op games. Later the older games were able to be converted up to run color tv. Some of the early games actually had a television placed in the cabinet. The machines were mainly marketed to grey area market and the "amusement game" vendors. Casinos installed some vp games and mostly paid on 2 pair to return bet. Somewhere along the way jacks or better returned bet. Then vp took off.
I can remember when 3 companies in New Jersey and one in Delaware claimed to have invented poker games. At least 2 of these were backyard companies complete with flow solder machines and a little team of folks installing parts in the green or blue boards. (These companies also did other electronic business.) Some of the pokers were made for the arcade business down at the shore. The old mechanical pokers were replaced by video.
I wonder if poker can have a patent. Unique varieties of the game of course. Anchor gaming is good example.
Just a little info. I'm sure others might add more.
Cheers Jeep
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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "brumar_lv" <brumar_lv@...> wrote:
Si Redd is generally credited with introducing VP. He was the President of Bally's when he left in 1970, founded IGT, and began to market VP. Bally's let him take the VP "idea" with him when he left, but the person who actually came up with the idea is not mentioned. It may have been someone at Bally's, or even someone not connected with Bally's. Does anyone know who this was, and whether they were granted a patent?
I tried to do a patent search using my computer but, unfortunately, was unable to access patent documents granted prior to 1970.